Patients with statutory health insurance
Why we need a referral — and what that means for your appointment.
Requirements of the statutory health insurance
Patients with statutory health insurance have to meet the requirements of their insurance when visiting the practice: please have your insurance card read and present a referral slip at your appointment. Your general practitioner can also send it to us electronically.
Despite the introduction of the chip card and the electronic patient record, it remains important that you present a referral slip from your general practitioner at our practice.
Why appointments are scarce
All patients with statutory insurance need a referral from their general practitioner. Only on the basis of that referral may we treat you under our contract with the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians of North Rhine (emergencies excepted). That contract requires a minimum of 25 hours of work per week from doctors in private practice. Our working hours are considerably longer.
Because there are few respiratory physicians and even fewer sleep physicians, appointments are scarce. If you have questions about the scarcity of appointments, please contact the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians of North Rhine.
In urgent cases your general practitioner can present you to us as an "arranged case". The staff of the GP practice then have to contact us; that is the prerequisite for such an arrangement.
If you have received a referral with an urgency code, please call 116 117. The Association will arrange an appointment with a respiratory physician within four weeks.