Patients' expectations have grown "unbelievably" in recent years, the chairman of the committee, josef hecken, told the berliner zeitung.
"It is not always the hospitals that want to perform interventions for money reasons. It's often the patients who demand treatment," said hecken. "Many people now consider their doctor to be incompetent if he advises against an intervention and simply prescribes a few days of bed rest."
An answer of the federal ministry of health to a question of the left parliamentary group, which became known on friday, had shown that the number of operations in germany has risen by more than a quarter since 2005. Measured in terms of population, this puts germany at the top of the global league table.
In many cases, only the benefits of treatment are seen and the risks are completely ignored, said the chairman of the federal committee. "There must be a rethink. Because "less is often more," emphasized hecken.
In contrast, physician president frank-ulrich montgomery was of the opinion that the statistics at best show that a lot of operations are performed in germany – "but not that too many operations are being performed.
If you take into account the pain of patients with osteoarthritis of the hoof who, for example in sweden, had to wait six months to a year for an operation, the high number of hoof operations in this country is a sign of quality, he told the "ruhr nachrichten" (saturday). The increase in back surgeries is high because they were hardly ever done until ten years ago.
However, montgomery conceded that it was not possible to rule out the possibility that one patient might be operated on too many times. "There are incentive systems that suggest that operations are also being carried out for economic reasons.The physicians are however by qualitatskontrollen endeavored to prevent this.