[Collective versus selective contracts from a legal point of view]. / Kollektivvertrag versus Einzelvertrag aus juristischer Sicht.

The historically proven organisational model of service relations between sickness funds and healthcare providers are collective contracts. A collective contract as a standards treaty ("Normenvertrag") is particularly pronounced concerning the panel doctor law ("Vertragsarztrecht") defining medical care on the basis of the principle of benefits in kind governing benefit claims of the insured in case of illness. The collective contract is a suitable instrument for ensuring both consistent and exhaustive provision of care and for organising the conditions of care, especially the quality and reimbursement of professional medical services. For several years the legislator has been "experimenting" with parallel contract design patterns such as the contract of integrated care in the form of selective contracts between health insurances or their associations and healthcare providers or groups of healthcare providers. More recently, allowances for conclusion of such contracts have been supposed to lead to competition between the contractual systems. It is doubtful whether this "push-start" will contribute to overcoming the systematic legal disadvantages of selective contracting as an organisational model for the provision of healthcare services to the insured.

[Definition and scope of medical professional law]. / Definition und Reichweite des arztlichen Berufsrechts.

Medical professional law can be defined as the sum of rules and standards that regulate access to, and the practice of, the medical profession. The medical profession is classified as a liberal profession in this context, not only from the professional and sociological point of view, but also from the constitutional and legal standpoint. The scope of medical professional law can be defined vertically and horizontally: on the one hand, with regard to the vast number of rules to which the physician is subject under the regulations of professional law and, on the other hand, with regard to regulations in special law, which conflict with other statutory provisions that are, in turn, either influenced by professional law (e.g. the law on contract physicians in Book V of the German Social Security Code) or themselves influence professional law by subjecting it to limitations (e.g. Art. 12 Para. 1 German Basic Law or European Community law).