A pharmazeutische Dienstleistung does not come with its conditions and its fee written into the law. Both come out of a contract negotiated between the pharmacists' national negotiating body and the umbrella body of the statutory health insurers. When the two sides cannot agree, the matter goes to arbitration, and that route is the Schiedsverfahren, where an arbitration body decides in place of the agreement the parties failed to reach.
The composition of that body, how it is convened, who may bring a matter to it and what happens while a decision is pending are procedural questions. The guidance from the ABDA and the Landesapothekerkammer answers them, and a pharmacy owner rarely needs that detail day to day.
The fee for a service is a negotiated and contestable number, not a price fixed by regulation. It was arrived at by two parties with opposed interests, it can be renegotiated, and it can go to arbitration and come back changed.
So any euro figure a pharmacy sees quoted for a service belongs to the date it was quoted on. Quoting it without that date is how a business case ends up built on a number that has since changed, and the Impfhonorar has been changed more than once by exactly this route.
Two practical consequences follow for a pharmacy:
- The fee that applied on the day of the service is the one that belongs on the Sonderbeleg, so a pharmacy that has not tracked rate changes will find the reconciliation harder.
- A calculation that only works at the current fee is fragile, because the fee is one of the inputs least under the pharmacy's control.
Anyone modelling a service through the Apothekenreform should know which figures in the model are set by negotiation and be able to say what happens to the result if one of them changes.
This glossary entry is general information about German pharmacy law and practice. It is not legal advice. For binding guidance on your own pharmacy, contact your Landesapothekerkammer.
