The second trend report of the Central Institute for Health Insurance Physician Care (ZI) shows that the number of outpatient treatment cases in the months of April, May and June has decreased significantly overall due to corona. For the analysis, medical accounting data from 16 of the 17 associations of panel physicians, based on early information, were evaluated and linked to the results of the first trend report. According to the results, the total case numbers in April and May 2020 were 23 and 15 percent below those of the same period in the previous year. A gradual normalization only resumed at the end of May. The area of pediatric and specialist care recorded the largest decreases, 34 and 26 percent respectively; a slight recovery was evident in May. According to the ZI Trend Report, there were also catch-up effects in individual specialist groups, with an increase of 10 percent in the number of general practitioners and specialists, 16 percent more than in the same period of the previous year for paediatricians and as much as 23 percent for psychotherapists. Psychotherapy, but also neurologists and pain therapists recorded the strongest increase in the number of patients.
Personal doctor-patient contacts had fallen significantly by the end of May, while telemedical services, for example, increased significantly. Telephone consultations have shot through the roof in the period from May 4 to June 30 this year with 3.1 million billed services, because last year in the same period only about half of this year’s telephone consultations were billed. Video consultation hours were booked 1.24 million times in the same period, while in 2019 a few thousand telemedical services of this type were found to be of interest. All in all, however, it remains apparent that the corona pandemic has raised the level, although there are fluctuations. Prevention and early detection examinations collapsed particularly sharply at the end of March. Therefore, the first quarter of 2020 must be regarded as declining. Screening programs such as mammography with 83 percent, but also skin cancer with 70 percent and colonoscopy with 43 percent showed a particularly strong decline. Imaging diagnostics, on the other hand, was far less affected, but here too, normalization did not return until the end of May 2020 due to fear of Covid-19 infections.