With health insurance

Rush on elective doctors overwhelms the system

The Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK) in Upper Austria cannot keep up with the processing of invoices submitted for elective doctors' fees. Now they even have to resort to temporary workers to process the flood of applications. In future, however, other measures will be taken.

Anyone in Upper Austria who currently submits an elective doctor's invoice to the health insurance fund (ÖGK) sometimes has to wait a long time for reimbursement. The reason: more and more Upper Austrians have to or want to switch to an elective doctor because it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an appointment with a statutory health insurance doctor in many specialist areas. As a result, the number of claims is naturally also increasing, as ÖGK reimburses part of the fee for many doctors' bills.