Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 76, June 2017

40 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
How much do we earn for a group treatment in
Germany?
For a 100-minute group session we earn (per patient) between 51,07€
(7 patients) and 88,03€ (3 patients), depending on the number of
patients (up to July 17 it was 44€ for any number of patients). For an
individual session, we receive 88 € plus extras. That means that from
July 2017 for conducting group therapy we will be paid 20% more,
which has caused a new interest in becoming a group therapist. This
is evidently a positive development, but group therapists had hoped,
that there would be modifications in the process of applying -
especially the need to write a report for every single patient of a group
in the beginning and sometimes for the whole group treatment.
Nevertheless, only 1% of treatments payed for by German
health insurance companies are group therapies. The reasons are
various and not for discussion here. When Building up a new group
you have to write an individual report for every patient. If you have
more than one or two groups you are continuously having to write new
reports. That means, the bureaucratic efforts are high and many
colleagues find them too much, so they don´t do groups. Nevertheless,
you can work with patients for 2 up to 4 years, meaning that good
groups work together with not too much changes of patients and, as a
result, can go deeper in the level of transference and provide an
atmosphere of deep trust and seriousness in their work. Most of the
GA in Germany have mainly individual patients and are conducting
one additional group once a week. But there are more and more
colleagues doing more than one group.
So, I don´t think, it´s a paradise for GA here, but we are aware
that there are good conditions in comparison to other countries. These
days it appears that younger colleagues more often take on an
additional group training, than was the case with former generations.
Martina Stang
martina.stang@me.com