Pharmazeutische Dienstleistung

A pharmazeutische Dienstleistung, abbreviated pDL, is a service a pharmacy provides beyond dispensing, regulated in § 129 Absatz 5e Sozialgesetzbuch V and financed from its own pot rather than from the margin on a pack.

Before the ApoVWG the catalogue was purely contractual, whereas the reform names ten services directly in statute. The services named in the statute include these:

• Counselling with risk-adapted measurement of risk factors such as blood values and blood pressure is one of the ten.
• Brief-intervention counselling on tobacco-related illness is named as a service of its own.
• The erweiterte Medikationsberatung bei Polymedikation is named separately from the Medikationsmanagement services.
• Medikationsmanagement covers both complex medication and newly prescribed long-term medication.
• Care for transplant patients and for patients on oral antitumour therapy is included in the list.
• Extended instruction in inhalation and injection technique belongs to the catalogue as well.
• Standardised risk assessment for high blood pressure is named in the statute too.

Three further changes apply alongside the list:

1. A doctor can now prescribe a pDL for a patient.
2. For the two Medikationsmanagement services the pharmacy has to coordinate with the treating physician beforehand.
3. Results have to reach the elektronische Patientenakte once that is technically possible.

The first item is the commercially interesting one, because a counselling service built on measured blood values makes diagnostics central to the catalogue. Billing to the health insurers begins on 1 January 2027 and the remuneration is still being negotiated, with a deadline of 1 November 2026 before the Schiedsstelle decides.

A pDL is not the same as an apothekenübliche Dienstleistung paid for privately.