GP president: GP-based system is more favorable
Published: Friday, Jun 14th 2024, 06:30
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The President of GPs and Paediatricians Switzerland is calling for more training places for her medical field. "The current 280 practice assistant positions across the country are not enough anywhere," says Monika Reber.
Almost three times as many are needed in order to have enough GPs in the future. "Today, family doctors and pediatricians make up around 30 percent of all doctors in Switzerland. According to studies, it should be 50 or even 60 percent," said the MFE President in an interview with the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" published on Friday. "It has been sufficiently proven that a GP-based healthcare system is more cost-effective."
However, GPs and pediatricians are underrepresented in training, and not just in terms of the number of available practice assistant positions: Many of the university professors are specialists, said Reber. "Less than 10 percent of the lectures in the degree course relate to GP medicine. And because hospitals need a lot of people, most residents go there for their five-year training."
GP medicine is on the brink
Reber criticized the lack of political will. "It's a paradox: politicians want to strengthen basic care and are calling for more outpatient treatment. But they do nothing about it. Nobody asks us: How many people do you need in this area?" Yet the issue is acute: "Currently, every second GP is over 55 years old, many are already of retirement age - it's easy to work out what will happen in ten years' time. We've been warning about an undersupply of GPs for a long time," says Reber.
In the interview, the MFE President also advocated the introduction of the new Tardoc tariff. "The current tariff is over 20 years old and simply no longer up to date. It reflects neither the infrastructure nor the personnel costs of today. The tariff also does not reflect modern working methods."
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