In November 2019, the German Bundestag passed the German Measles Protection Act, which, since March 1, 2020, has allowed doctors to issue follow-up or repeat prescriptions for patients who regularly require certain drugs, which they then receive from a local pharmacy or a mail-order pharmacy. For chronically ill people with a good and stable course of disease who have to take the same medication every day, a real gain, the legislator thought. However, even half a year after the legal regulation came into force, many patients still complain about difficulties in obtaining permanent prescriptions from specialists and family doctors. The independent Patient Advisory Service Germany (UPD) knows the patients‘ accusations and also the reasons for the failure so far. Obviously, there are no concrete implementing provisions by the legislator, with the result that there are obvious problems of communication between the German Pharmacists‘ Association (DAV), the Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) and the central association of the statutory health insurance funds, and they are therefore not pulling together. Specialists and family doctors are also unsettled by this. Well-prepared chronically ill people could benefit and would not have to go to the doctor at short intervals to obtain follow-up prescriptions if there were clear and uniform rules with concrete instructions from the legislator for all those involved in the process, believes Thorben Krumweide, managing director of UPD.
