Commission wants to speed up e-patient dossier obligation
Published: Friday, Nov 17th 2023, 17:00
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Healthcare professionals should be obliged to keep an electronic patient file sooner than planned. This is the demand of the responsible National Council committee. It wants to increase the spread and benefits of the e-patient file.
According to the Federal Council's plans, in future not only inpatient hospital and care facilities will work with the electronic dossier, but also outpatient specialists. Before the corresponding new legal regulations come into force, the providers - the so-called "Stammgemeinschaften" - are to receive financial support.
The National Council's Social Security and Health Committee (SGK-N) now wants to implement the mandatory integration of service providers into the electronic patient dossier more quickly than the Federal Council, as the parliamentary services announced on Friday. The SGK-N envisages a transitional period of one year after the financing bill comes into force.
Parliament had already called for such an obligation in 2021 at the request of the SGK-N. Sanctions are envisaged if service providers do not comply with this obligation. A minority rejects the obligation for all service providers to join.
E-dossier still not very widespread
In the case of federal and cantonal financial aid, it should be stipulated that this must be paid out regardless of the chosen parent association in order to promote competition between the parent associations. A majority of the committee would also like to enable financial aid for improving the use of existing dossiers and the integration of service providers.
The electronic patient record is a digital collection of important information relating to a person's health. It pursues several goals: Among other things, it aims to improve the quality of medical treatment, increase the efficiency of the healthcare system, improve patient safety and promote patients' health literacy.
In mid-2022, only just over one per thousand of the Swiss population had such an e-patient file - most of them lived in French-speaking Switzerland.
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