Corona current: Vaccinations at the family doctor

Corona current
Vaccinations in General Practices: The Most Important Questions and Answers

by Stephanie Pingel

April 6th, 2021, 5:08 pm

With the vaccinations against the coronavirus, progress is still rather slow. That is why Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) is now also making family doctors responsible: From today, it should be possible to get vaccinations in family doctor’s practices nationwide. Around a million doses of vaccine are planned for the first few weeks in April. Here we clarify the most important questions about the new vaccination strategy.

1. How many vaccinations can I have per week?

For this first week, the range of vaccination doses in general practitioners’ practices is still modest: around 35,000 out of 54,000 practices are due to start vaccinating this week, but together they will only receive 940,000 vaccination doses. This corresponds to only around 26 doses per practice. From April 26, the offer will increase significantly – more than three million vaccine doses will then end up in general practitioners’ practices.

2. Who can be vaccinated?

In general, the order of priority that has already been set for vaccinations also applies to general practitioners’ practices. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, however, there will be no central invitation for the respective patients – the practices can regulate how they assign the appointments themselves. Telephone calls or online bookings are possible, for example. In addition, based on the prioritization ordinance, the practices can also give preference to patients who are particularly at risk from a medical point of view.

3. How do the vaccinations work?

The general practitioners’ practices can always order their vaccination doses for the following week from the pharmacies on Tuesdays until 12:00 noon. The vaccines are then delivered on Monday afternoon, as the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians explains. Due to the limited amount of the vaccine, the practices must expect that fewer doses may be delivered at the beginning, than were ordered. However, the information about this should be available to the family doctor by the Thursday in the week before delivery so that vaccination appointments that have already been made can be rescheduled at short notice.

4. Which vaccine is used?

According to Spahn, only the vaccine from Biontech / Pfizer should be used in general practitioners’ practices during the first two weeks of April, since only this is currently available in the appropriate quantity. From April 19, the vaccine from AstraZeneca will also be vaccinated, followed by that from Johnson & Johnson. Due to the scarcity of vaccines, it is initially not possible to choose the vaccine in the practices.

5. Do I have to pay for the vaccination?

Doctors receive a fee of 20 euros per corona vaccination (information and advice are included), which is billed to the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. It does not matter whether patients are legally or privately insured – the federal government bears the vaccination costs. According to a proposal from the Ministry of Finance, up to 1.5 billion euros are currently included in the calculation. 100 million of these are to fall in April, 650 million in May and 730 million in June.

Sources used: tagesschau.de, dpa, zdf.de