Medical Association
Medical cooperatives are voluntary associations of resident doctors who work together in business. The primary goal of these cooperatives is to represent the interests of their members and to promote and improve medical care in Germany.
Doctors' cooperatives do not have a statutory mandate in the context of outpatient care, but can still take over parts of outpatient care within the meaning of Book V of the Social Code (SGB V). Medical cooperatives act as commercial enterprises. They are not financed from contributions to statutory health insurance, but from their own economic activities and / or contributions from their members.
history
The Second Statutory Health Insurance Reorganization Act 1997 (2nd NOG) already had the aim of promoting new care structures in the outpatient sector through stronger networking of resident doctors - so-called practice networks or doctor networks . The term practice network is not legally defined and offers the contractual partners involved a great deal of leeway in structuring their cooperation. Against this background, the first doctor networks with different organizational forms emerged in the following years. Against the background of the idea of economic efficiency, medical networks increasingly formed as cooperatives.
Knowing that freelance work is an essential pillar of maintaining the health system, the first nationwide doctors' cooperative was founded in Schleswig-Holstein on May 24, 2000. The founding members included 1,200 resident doctors and psychotherapists from Schleswig-Holstein. The motivation was to develop an independent, grassroots corporate structure alongside the statutory health insurance associations (KVen), which, as public law corporations, are not assigned the task of representing the interests of their members in SGB V.
“Remarkable: The establishment of a strong parallel organization to the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians came from the board of KV Schleswig-Holstein, the district board members and already existing practice networks. The objective was a voluntary company form as an alternative to the 'purchasing models' of the health insurance companies. It was a clear and significant reaction to the vague security mandate for health care issued by politicians. "
There are now national doctors' cooperatives in numerous federal states.
On January 19, 2010, the medical cooperative Schleswig-Holstein eG renamed itself after the merger with the medical cooperative Hamburg eG in the north medical cooperative.
organization
Medical cooperatives are structured in accordance with the Cooperative Act . Medical cooperatives have a board of directors , a supervisory board and a general assembly .
The board of directors conducts the business of the medical association. It is made up of members of the doctors' cooperative and usually carries out its work on a voluntary basis. Most of the board members work as resident doctors and thus maintain close contact with patient care and its problems.
The supervisory board monitors the work of the management board. He names the members of the board and dismisses them if necessary. The supervisory board represents the interests of the members vis-à-vis the management board. The supervisory board of a medical cooperative is also usually composed of resident doctors who work on a voluntary basis in cooperative work.
The general assembly is the highest body of the medical association. As a rule, it consists of all members of the medical association, i.e. the resident doctors. The board of directors and the supervisory board must present their work at least once a year before the general assembly in order to be approved for the past financial year.
aims
The objectives of a medical association can vary in detail from company to company. However, all medical cooperatives have the goal of promoting the business operations of their members in accordance with the Cooperative Act. In the implementation, this includes, for example, the organization of the joint purchasing of the members of the cooperative as well as the assumption of care tasks in outpatient care through the conclusion of so-called selective contracts with the statutory health insurance companies . The doctors 'cooperatives usually do not intend to make a profit, but use the funds they generate to promote the care structures in the respective region in which the doctors' cooperative is effective. The objectives are regulated in detail in the statutes of the medical association.
Most medical cooperatives also aim to maintain independence for the profession of general practitioner. Political activities are developed, such as B. joint protest events as part of the nationwide medical protests in 2006 and 2009.
Divisions
A typical example of cooperative action is the organization of joint purchasing. The aim here is to pool demand for B. to negotiate better purchasing conditions or better framework conditions. Subsidiaries in the form of service companies are often established for this purpose. Typical examples of this are the three subsidiaries of the Ärztegenossenschaft Nord: the ädg service company mbH & Co.KG (practice equipment, insurance, payroll accounting, seminars), the nationwide operating Q-Pharm AG (pharmaceutical company, generics) and the mediageno Verlags GmbH (publisher and media service provider in the healthcare system).
It is not uncommon for doctors' cooperatives to earn money within the framework of a company division in order to use it elsewhere for measures to promote structures. A typical field for such structure-promoting measures is the promotion of practice networks. The aim of such practice networks is, among other things, to improve regional patient care and to promote cooperation between general practitioners and specialists, hospitals, care facilities, etc. Especially in connection with the increasing demands on the supply of an aging population, the role of practice networks is becoming increasingly important.
When concluding selective contracts, it is also about improving the supply of the population. In selective contracts, agreements are made between doctors' cooperatives and statutory health insurance funds that contain regulations that deviate from the statutory health insurance benefits agreed at the federal level. As a result, it is often a question of innovative forms of care, which are often located in the areas of prevention or telemedical applications.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Book Five of the Social Code (SGB V)
- ↑ National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians for Practice Networks
- ^ Medical Quality Association Rendsburg eG ( Memento from September 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Ärztegenossenschaft Nord eG (formerly Ärztegenossenschaft Schleswig-Holstein.de)
- ↑ medi-report ( Memento from November 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ [Until 2014 on the Regionales Gesundheitsnetz Leverkusen eG website]
- ↑ Articles of Association of the North Medical Association as a representative example (PDF 127 KB) ( Memento from January 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Article in Deutsches Ärzteblatt on the 2006 medical protests
- ↑ Press release of the NAV-Virchow-Bund on the 2006 medical protests
- ^ Article in Deutsches Ärzteblatt on the medical protests in 2009
- ↑ Subsidiaries of the North Medical Association
- ↑ Doctors' cooperative Lower Saxony-Bremen eG (to the contracts via navigation)
- ↑ Contracts of the Ärztegenossenschaft Nord eG
literature
- Genossenschaftsverband Frankfurt eV Andramedos eG (Ed.): Shaping regional health care. Challenges, trends and solutions . Dustri-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-89967-360-3 .
