Kiel/kim – Words like “itsy-bitsy” or “match” and jingle a year ago were tongue-breakers for Leon. They did not pass the lips of the six-year-old, he had a slurred speech and his playmates in kindergarten did not understand him. “He was isolated and became more and more quiet” his father Maik  Sayk-Grams reports. That the boy is able to pronounce the sibilants and for the first time got an invitation to a children’s birthday he owes to the speech therapist team of H.-J.Hohmann
in Neumuenster, his father says. But the continuation of the 60-hour therapy is endangered. “My general practitioner shortly refused the follow-up prescription” says the father angrily. Only after the intervention of his insurance he found a doctor, who wrote out a prescription. Cases went similarly for many other affected parents, Hohmann states. The proof: He presently handles 40 percent less patients than a year ago. “ Other colleagues are much worse off and have to dismiss staff” says the fifty-two year old  who for about twenty-three years (re-) teaches children and stroke patients  speaking.
 

The blame for this misery must be put on  the guide-value –agreement for medication, which took effect from 1 January. In accordance with this,  therapy hours can only be prescribed to a maximum, limit to lower the costs of the insurances. The medication budget for pediatricians  amounts to 2.27 Euro per patient and quarter – an hour in remedial education costs an average of 33 Euro. The consequence: The doctors fear high compensation claims and thus do not send patients to the therapist. “ The involved children are the ones to suffer. ”Homann notes with regret. In the end society will have to pay the price, when problems at school are emerging. However, speech deficiencies have grown, as entry tests are proving. Detleff Banthien from Bad Oldeslohe, regional president of the paediatricians is tracing that back to an “increased media consumption in addition to the missing and more and more competence lacking communication with the children.” Instead  of reading to and speaking with their children they would be “parked” in front of the TV.

For Burkhard Schuerenberg, otorhinolaryngologist and specialist for phoniatrics in Schleswig, the new drug budget is a “perfidious system. We get under pressure  from insurances, parents and therapists on whose expense we do not have any influence”. For,  the rates per hour for the speech therapist are negotiated by the insurances. Schuerenberger, too, can only dispose about half of the funds from last quarter and is confronted with reproaches. The fact, that just the insurances
recommend to the rejected patients to suit their doctors would show, “
how extremely insane this system is”. This is again stated by the fact, that the job centres pay retraining  to speech pathologist ( costs: 35000€ ) although  tapping the brakes with speech therapy. In the exam year 2005 26 of 27 pupils have been publicly supported, as graduates report.