Full emergencies: the doctor demands that the freeze be suspended

Mr. Widler, the canton of Zurich has made an urgent appeal to the population. The emergency departments of the hospitals are overloaded, it is better to go to the family doctor if possible. What’s going on there?

Some emergency departments have raised an alarm with the health department because they are overcrowded and patients have to wait long for treatment. Especially because many people flock to emergencies with trifles.

Why do so many people with harmless symptoms go to the hospital at all?

There are various reasons for this. Actually, I don’t think the word bagatelle is so appropriate. A sprained foot is also a problem that needs to be taken seriously. But the matter does not need to be dealt with in an emergency. Your family doctor can do that. However, many people no longer have a family doctor. Others may want immediate treatment on a Sunday and so go to the emergency department. In addition, people find it increasingly difficult to assess whether they have a problem that they could perhaps simply take care of themselves.

Why do you think that?

We doctors simply realize that there is a great deal of uncertainty today. While in the days of our grandmothers we still knew how to help ourselves, today most people want medical or other medical care for any health problem.

Today people can not Dr. Consult Google and are generally better informed.

You can find good information on the Internet, but if you search long enough, you will eventually come across a serious illness that you might also have. Some of the patients then want to have it clarified exactly whether their headache or back pain is not the result of a serious illness. They demand negative evidence, they want X-rays or MRIs. All of this leads to more medical services being used.

The canton wants to relieve the hospital emergency departments by requiring patients to pay a fee in the future if they go to an emergency for a small matter. What do you make of it?

I am sceptical. On the one hand, the legal implementation is likely to be difficult. On the other hand, the fee could also discourage people who need urgent medical help from emergency visits.

If the canton has its way, patients should also increase the Cantonal hotline Doctors use and visit the family doctor. Do the general practitioners even have enough capacity?

Not all. And the permanences are increasingly overloaded. Basic suppliers are in short supply today. More and more GP practices had to close or turn away patients because no successor could be found or there was a lack of staff. In a letter, we have now asked the members of the Federal Parliament to campaign against the freeze on the approval of doctors.

What good would that do?

Today, foreign doctors are only allowed to start working in medical practices if they have already been employed in a hospital or outpatient teaching practice in Switzerland for at least three years. That has to change, at least in basic care, the requirements are too strict. We urgently need a legal solution so that general practitioners can employ foreign specialists if they cannot find young people in Germany.

Is the situation really as dramatic as you say? A few years ago, a study by the Santésuisse health insurance association came to the conclusion that there are enough general practitioners – even in the canton of Zurich.

What Santésuisse says no longer counts for me. They only know one narrative: there are too many doctors, and they also do the wrong billing. The study you mention just falls short. Santésuisse only counted the number of doctors, but did not look at the hours they work. Many young doctors only work part-time these days. It usually takes two doctors to replace a family doctor who is retiring. So we need to train more doctors. But even if we do that, it will take a long time for the measure to take effect. The ban on doctors in primary care should therefore be suspended, at least in a transitional phase.