GOÄ

GOÄ stands for Gebührenordnung für Ärzte, the schedule physicians use when they bill privately paying patients, and it lists each service with a defined rate and a multiplier.

The GOÄ comes up constantly in conversations about pharmacy diagnostics, usually with the wrong conclusion attached. A pharmacy is not a physician and does not bill under the GOÄ. A blood collection offered by a pharmacy is an apothekenübliche Dienstleistung that the customer pays for privately, and the pharmacy sets the price.

The GOÄ still matters in two practical ways:

1. It is the reference point customers already have in mind, because a comparable service billed by a physician has a published rate.
2. Where a physician is genuinely involved, for example in interpreting results, that physician bills their own part under the GOÄ separately from the pharmacy's charge.

Free pricing does not mean loose pricing, so the total price belongs in writing before the service, together with what it covers and what it does not. Advertising that price is governed by the Heilmittelwerbegesetz, which permits factual statements and prohibits promises about outcomes.

Keeping the categories apart is what protects a pharmacy, because three different channels are involved:

• A pharmazeutische Dienstleistung is financed by the health insurers from its own pot.
• A privately paid diagnostics offering is financed by the customer alone.
• The GOÄ belongs to neither channel, so a pharmacy price presented as a GOÄ rate would misdescribe what the customer is buying.

For pricing work the useful question is what the service costs the pharmacy to deliver and what it is worth to the customer, and not what a physician would be entitled to charge for something adjacent.