[The Primary Health Care Situation in Saxony-Anhalt. Perception, Description and Evaluation of Local Health Care...

Background: The combination of ageing general practitioners and a shortage of young doctors is having a negative effect on primary health care in almost all municipalities in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The communities are finding it progressively more difficult to safeguard the provision of primary health care. To solve these problems, they have neither the appropriate skills nor sufficient funding. The aim of this study was to ask mayors in Saxony-Anhalt to describe and evaluate local primary health-care systems from their perspective. Method: In June of 2013, all 124 full-time mayors in Saxony-Anhalt were asked by e-mail to participate in a web-based survey. The questionnaire was broken down into the categories: "socio-demographics", "health-care system in the communities", "causes and measures taken to deal with health-care problems", "development of the primary health-care system" and "cooperation". The data were descriptively analysed using IBM Statistics SPSS. Results: The response rate was 51.6% (n=64). For 87.5% of the respondents the primary health-care system is an important location factor in their community. 45.3% consider it their duty to ensure the provision of local health care. However, 42.6% of the polled mayors believe the infrastructure in their community to be too unattractive to convince young general practitioners to settle down there. In the next 10 years, 75.0% of the respondents expect the provision of primary health care to deteriorate further. Conclusions: In view of local deficits, the polled municipalities are very interested in safeguarding the continued existence of primary health care. As local experts, communities should get more involved in planning and decision-making processes.