Akutversorgung

Akutversorgung is the second and less advanced branch of Rx-Abgabe ohne Rezept. It stands in paragraph 48b AMG and it addresses the acute situation, the person who needs a prescription only medicine now and cannot reach a prescriber in time. The paragraph is real and it is in the statute book. The mechanism behind it is not operable.

The reason is that the statute leaves the substance to be filled in. The BfArM has to issue implementing recommendations, and it has until 2 July 2027 to do so. That deadline sets the earliest realistic start at the summer of 2027, and only if the recommendations arrive on time and are workable as written. A pharmacy that reads a headline about being allowed to supply in an emergency and concludes that it may do so this year has misread the position. Nothing in the paragraph is usable at the counter until the recommendations exist.

That makes Akutversorgung a term to understand rather than a service to build. The useful work in the meantime is preparatory and it is mostly about not confusing it with the branch that does already apply. Anschlussversorgung has been in force since 2 July 2026, it covers the continuation of a chronic therapy, and it has its own narrow conditions. The acute case is a different situation, a different paragraph and a different timetable, and the team needs to be able to tell a customer which of the two is being talked about.

What the recommendations will require is not something to guess at. The shape of the rule is clear enough, a defined acute situation, a limited quantity and some form of documentation and follow up towards a prescriber, but the detail will be set by the BfArM recommendations and then interpreted for practice in the guidance from the ABDA and the Landesapothekerkammer. A pharmacy following the Apothekenreform should watch for those two documents and treat everything before them as provisional. Writing a procedure now would mean writing it twice, and the version written in advance is the one most likely to be wrong when the requirements finally land. The sensible position on the acute case is attention rather than implementation, which is the opposite of the position on the rest of the ApoVWG, where the changes took effect on 2 July 2026 and the work is already due.