E-prescription chaos in Kassel: Pharmacies are fighting against technical breakdowns!

E-prescription chaos in Kassel: Pharmacies are fighting against technical breakdowns!

In Kassel, there have been repeated technical problems when issuing and retrieving e-prescriptions in pharmacies for weeks. The employees of the Rosen-Apotheke complain about difficulties accessing e-prescriptions, which have increased in the last two weeks. These disruptions not only affect individual companies, but can be observed across the region and are bringing both pharmacies and doctors' practices to the brink of madness. The system usually only doesn't work for a few hours, although outages lasting almost a whole day have been recorded. The HNA reports that patients are often asked to come back later because the problems simply cannot be planned.

Especially in urgent cases where patients need medication on the same day, the current situation means that many people have to resort to the good old paper prescription. Carolin Bippart from the Post-Apotheke explains that the problems could partly be due to the devices used. To prevent this, they purchased an additional terminal from another manufacturer that works in the event of failures. In the Bear Pharmacy at the clinic, however, there have been no disruptions recently, which makes the situation there more bearable.

Comprehensive disruptions and their effects

The problems are not just local, but go far beyond Kassel. According to pharmacist associations, the e-prescription system is unstable, which ZEIT describes as comparable to the unreliability of Deutsche Bahn. In the last two weeks, there were five days of complete system failures or significant disruptions, affecting tens of thousands of patients. Thomas Preis, the head of the federal association, is calling on Gematik GmbH to improve the reliability of the system, which should be mandatory for prescription drugs from January 2024.

In view of this situation, pharmacies are demanding more freedom for patient care during system failures. Eugen Brysch from the German Foundation for Patient Protection suggests a “daily updated e-prescription radar” to inform doctors in real time about the system status. A corresponding advance warning system for disruptions would be of great importance in order to ensure patient care.

Future challenges and possible solutions

Although the digitalization of the healthcare system is unavoidable, the current unreliabilities are unacceptable. Gematik should not only get the technical problems under control, but also provide deeper insights into the frequent failures. Monthly incident reports could help make the situation more transparent and increase patient safety.

The current situation in Kassel is a warning for everyone involved. Patients and pharmacists must be able to rely on the fact that they will receive uncomplicated and efficient care when necessary. It remains to be hoped that those responsible will work on solutions as quickly as possible and that the disruptions will be a thing of the past once and for all.