Germany will change the rules for emergency medical care

The German Bundestag on 15 October approved a reform of emergency medical care that will change the procedure for visiting hospitals and calling emergency services. New rules include the creation of special medical centers, preliminary assessment of patients' condition and expansion of remote consultations. The reform is expected to come into force in 2027.

This is reported by the German Bundestag and Tagesschau.

The main goal of the reform is to reduce the load on hospital emergency departments. According to German doctors, a significant part of patients seek help for problems that can be solved by a family doctor or on-call medical practice.

For this purpose, nationwide around 750 integrated emergency centers (Integrierte Notfallzentren) are planned. They will be based at hospitals and will combine emergency departments, on-call doctor practices and primary assessment units.

After visiting such a center, medical staff will determine how urgent the help is. Depending on the condition, the person will be directed to the emergency department, an on-call doctor or another appropriate medical facility.

What will change for patients in Germany

One of the main innovations will be strengthening the role of the 116117 hotline, which is intended for obtaining medical help in non-life-threatening situations.

Under the new rules, operators will be able to assess the urgency of the call and offer patients various options of help: a doctor's consultation, video appointment, home visit by a medical worker or referral to a hospital.

The 116117 and 112 hotlines are also planned to be connected into a digital information exchange system to transfer calls to appropriate specialists faster.

At the same time, the emergency number 112 will continue to operate unchanged. In case of life-threatening situations, in particular suspected heart attack, stroke or severe injuries, an ambulance should be called exactly by this number.

Instead, 116117 can be called in cases when medical help is urgently needed but there is no immediate threat to life and an ordinary doctor's practice is unavailable.

The reform will also allow ambulance workers to provide necessary treatment directly on the spot more often, if hospitalization is not required. Such services are planned to be included in the financing system of the statutory health insurance.

For digitalization of emergency services and establishing information exchange between them, the federal government has allocated 225 million euros for 2027–2031.

When the reform will start

The new provisions are planned to be introduced from 2027, but the creation of integrated centers and modernization of services will take place gradually.

For Ukrainians living in Germany, this means that the procedure for obtaining emergency medical care will become more centralized over time. At the same time, already now one can use number 116117 for calls that are not life-threatening, and number 112 for calling emergency services.

According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, in 2024 hospital emergency departments received about 13 million outpatients. This is 5% more than the year before and is the highest figure since the beginning of the respective statistics in 2018.

Based on materials: German Bundestag, Tagesschau