€300 before anyone audits the surgery, and seven in ten checks would go

A health service runs on two things: people who treat you, and paper that proves they did. A draft law from the Federal Health Ministry, seen by the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, goes after the second. It carries the unlovely name Hilfsmittelmodernisierungs- und Bürokratierückbaugesetz, and the ministry puts the saving at about €100 million a year, rising to about €180 million a year from 2030¹.

The headline change is small and concrete. Insurers would no longer be able to request an efficiency audit of a practice for sums below €300, counted per practice site, per quarter and per insurer¹. Doctors’ bodies, among them the KBV and the German Medical Association, have asked for such a threshold for years. The ministry expects about 70% of the audit procedures carried out so far to fall away¹. Desk arithmetic: seven in ten fewer procedures means seven in ten fewer letters, replies and files on both sides of the desk.

Psychotherapy for the young gets its own line. Therapists who mainly or only treat children and adolescents would form a separate group in the planning of where practices may open, so places can be steered to where the need is¹. Applying for short-term therapy would go from two steps to one, and a digital application and review procedure would be added¹.

Hospitals would drop several reports: the detailed staffing data for psychiatric and psychosomatic units, the proof of how extra money for nurses’ pay rises was spent, and the InEK extreme-cost report¹. Quality-assurance data would follow a once-only rule, so a provider reports a figure once rather than once per procedure¹. Insurers would file reports on bonus programmes every five years instead of every three¹.

None of this is law yet, and drafts change on their way through. But the direction is the right one. A threshold, a single form and a report nobody reads anymore struck off: that is how a system gets its staff back, one quarter at a time.