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The six kilometer rule
The five kilometers to the nearest pharmacy, however, are not enough for your own medicine cabinet in the office. According to the law, this would have to be at least six kilometers, too many, it is thought. Therefore, the doctor has started a petition, 30,000 people have signed. The abolition of this six kilometer rule is the central demand of the petition addressed to the Minister of Health, Rudolf Anschober (Greens). The medical association also supports the lawsuit. “It is problematic that patients get a prescription from the doctor and then have to drive,” says Max Wudy, spokesman for the general practitioner of the Lower Austrian Medical Association (ÄKNÖ). “The situation is even worse with home visits. We come to people’s houses especially because they are not doing well and then the patient is there with a prescription and does not know how to get the medication, ”says Wudy.
According to Michael Dihlmann, spokesman for the initiative, the group of those affected includes 160 communities with a single general practitioner, no pharmacy and no public pharmacy. 50 of them are in Lower Austria, which is the most affected.
The problem of the shortage of GPs has not been solved for a long time with the flexibility of home pharmacies, but at least it has been deactivated in a first step: “If you take care of people directly, you can also work better. That increases job satisfaction, ”says Wudy.
