In the wage dispute with the Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK), Carinthian doctors will go on warning strike on Monday. Doctor’s offices will open on this day only at 10:00 a.m. The Medical Association expects that around three quarters of doctors will join the strike. If the protest bears no fruit, further measures – including multi-day closures of offices – may follow. ÖGK Director Bernhard Wurzer, meanwhile, insisted on a general contract.
The Medical Association has already been protesting for some time against the ÖGK’s line: Fee adjustments are being refused, the increasing number of patients is no longer being compensated, the fees are not even being adjusted to inflation. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fill open health insurance positions, because of a lack of attractiveness. With longer life expectancy also come older and more seriously ill patients, and there is the threat of a situation in which the system in its current form can no longer be maintained.
The ÖGK had called last week for “dialogue instead of confrontation” and regretted the warning strike. The professional representation should end the confrontational course and return to the negotiating table, because only there could the doctors’ demands be discussed in a solution-oriented way.
ÖGK Director Wurzer: Needs general contract
The Director General of the Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK), Bernhard Wurzer, declared on Sunday evening in ORF’s “ZiB2” that a general contract is needed. He thought this would succeed if everyone returned to the table “and away from the political discussions and ideological discussions.” Wurzer saw the Medical Association as having a duty here: Contract negotiations would “always require agreement from both sides.”
For the doctors’ fees, a decision must be made: “If you want the highest fee in every federal state for every doctor, then it will be very, very expensive for the system, then it will be very, very difficult, especially in financially strained times, to reach an agreement. Or we manage to work together on a consensus to do what is best for the insured and what is best for the patients.”
Wurzer referred to Court of Audit proposal for disempowerment
Wurzer also referred to the recent draft report of the Court of Audit, in which a disempowerment of the nine regional medical chambers was proposed – they should therefore no longer have to agree to the uniform regulations. “The Court of Audit is very clear: There is the possibility to say, one creates a legal basis that there is only one contractual partner for the Austrian Health Insurance Fund, namely the Austrian Medical Association. And no longer the approval of the nine regional medical chambers is required,” said Wurzer. “Or we succeed in getting all ten on board – that is a matter of negotiation.”
ÖGK Director: Also on amalgam, ball is with doctors
Asked when there will finally be a successor regulation for the dental filling material amalgam, which has been banned since the beginning of the year, Wurzer also referred to negotiations with the Medical Association. “Here too it is the case that we are dependent on the other side,” said Wurzer. “You cannot conclude an employment contract or any other contract if the other side says, under these conditions I will not do it. One can try to approach and influence each other, and obviously the Dental Association is not yet prepared to approach us here.”
