ÖGK boss Wurzer says:

“Telemedicine now has a tailwind”

Bernhard Wurzer, from Lower Austria and Director of the Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK), talks about the crisis situation.

Mr. Wurzer, how has Lower Austria fared so far in overcoming the crisis?

Bernhard Wurzer: Very well. I would like to express my thanks to all our contract doctors. As our monitoring shows, care in the private practice sector has worked very well across the board.

And politically?

The provincial government, for example, has also played a very strong and successful role in the nationwide procurement of protective equipment. It was very important that everyone consistently pulled together here.

How is the crisis affecting policyholders in the state? 

In Lower Austria, too, we recorded an increase in the number of insured persons for the first time last week. This is just under three percent and therefore slightly below the national average. However, one of the reasons for this is that the previous decline was less massive.

As Krone readers already know, pilot projects for telemedicine, such as monitor examinations in Lower Austria, were planned for this year. Are these new projects now coming faster due to the corona crisis?

What is certain is that the entire field of telemedicine has now been given a tailwind by the crisis. The skeptics have certainly become very quiet. We are therefore already working intensively to initiate a change process as quickly as possible. Measures such as telephone sick notes, for example, have become indispensable.