The startup Scanacs, a software developer from Dresden, has entered into a technological partnership with the Zur Rose subsidiary eHealth-Tech. The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Frank Böhme. Scanacs‘ digital communication platform makes it possible for pharmacies and health insurance companies to communicate more easily and efficiently in the future, explains Böhme because this way, the co-payment status of insured persons can be checked much more quickly, easily, and securely in real-time when e-prescriptions are redeemed at the pharmacy.
Thus, the check ensures that the insured doesn’t have to pay anything extra when the system indicates this. In addition, there are also reimbursement notices from the connected health insurance funds – so far, these are health insurance funds with a total of 27 million insured persons and 3,000 connected pharmacies.
However, this so-called direct billing is currently not yet possible. However, when e-prescription becomes mandatory in January 2022, the affiliated insureds will benefit from the fast online service for co-payment verification as a subsidiary of the Swiss company Zur Rose, eHealth GmbH from Berlin has been able to gain a great deal of experience in the e-prescription process to date, including in the prescription model project of the Techniker Krankenkasse health insurance fund in Hamburg. The company, which is part of the DocMorris parent group, has also been commissioned by IBM Deutschland to set up Gematik’s e-prescription infrastructure in Germany.
Many politicians, for example from the Green Party, the FDP, and the Left Party, including Sylvia Gabelmann as a pharmaceutical expert, are annoyed by the cooperation. She and others fear competitive disadvantages for German stationary pharmacies because the technological partnership could strengthen the mail-order business, including from abroad.
Scanacs CEO Frank Böhme, who has previously worked for a health insurance company, a pharmaceutical group, and as a prescription checker, believes in his company’s innovative concept, however, not least because of the cooperation, which he sees as valuable, can avoid retaxes for pharmacies.