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Family doctor with a sample e-prescription
Photo: Frank Hormann / dpa
Anyone who tried to get medication from a pharmacy on Tuesday morning with an electronic prescription could have failed due to computer problems.
Due to a technical malfunction, electronic prescriptions could not be redeemed or created at times.
Problems could also have arisen when reading health cards in doctor's offices.
This was announced by Gematik, which monitors the operation of the so-called telematics infrastructure (TI) in which the problems occurred.
The reason for this is “recurring technical problems” at the provider medisign, which, as a service provider, enables doctors’ practices and pharmacies to access the TI.
In fact, there were similar disruptions at times on Monday morning, last Thursday and March 4th.
To remedy the situation, Gematik recommended that “inserting the health card several times or trying again after a few minutes could help in the meantime.”
Third party responsible
Gematik works in close communication with everyone involved and analyzes every incident with great effort, the company said in response to a SPIEGEL request.
“We can currently see that there are delays in redeeming e-prescriptions,” said a spokeswoman.
However, it is currently not possible to specifically quantify how many e-prescriptions could not be issued.
Gematik also said that only practices and pharmacies that use the service provider Medidesign to connect to the TI are potentially affected by the disruption.
Medidesign is only one of four providers that provide support with a corresponding connection.
Doctors upset
The repeated malfunctions apparently cause some trouble for doctors and software manufacturers who use the system, as the technology website “Heise” reported.
They complained that the information policy was a disaster, but they had now gotten used to failures.
The report went on to say that problems occurred several times on the hour, which could indicate congestion issues.
At the end of February, there were also disruptions in the electronic patient files at various health insurance companies.
At the beginning of March, certain insured persons experienced problems with their health ID, which patients can use to use official health apps.
The telematics infrastructure is considered key to the digitalization of the German healthcare system and is intended to ensure the networking of doctors, pharmacies and insured persons.
However, she has been criticized by doctors for a long time because, according to her reports, the system is often shaky and causes extra work in the practices.
hp