Up to now, pharmaceutical services have only been approved as third parties in selected supply contracts. The On-site Pharmacy Strengthening Act, which is currently still being coordinated between the Federal Ministry of Health and the EU, is intended as a first step towards establishing the services. However, the law only provides for collective agreements between the health insurance funds and the German Pharmacists‘ Association. Tim Steimle, head of the pharmaceutical department at TK, would like to change this and presents his health insurance company’s plans for selective contractual care models in an interview with DAZ (Deutsche Apotheker-Zeitung).
TK is currently conducting workshops with selected pharmacists from chambers and associations in which innovative products and services are designed for potential individual contracts. According to Steimle, these will, in turn, be presented to a selected group of customers and subsequently revised. The aim is to bring pharmaceutical services back into the political discussion. Although the TK considers collective agreements to be useful in principle, it would like the legislator to create the conditions for the conclusion of contracts between individual health insurance funds and pharmacists. Currently, this is only possible if doctors are also involved, which Steimle critically evaluates. In the long term, however, the supply models designed by TK should not only concern selective contracts but ideally reach insured persons nationwide – similar to the ArzneiCoach project developed by TK. Despite the lack of a legal basis, Steimle takes a positive view of the innovation workshops and calls on pharmacists to be more proactive in their efforts to obtain marketing authorisation for pharmaceutical services.
