The Behandlungsvertrag is the legal relationship underneath a service, and it is easy to overlook precisely because it is rarely a piece of paper. Under the German civil code an agreement of this kind obliges one side to perform a service according to the recognised standards of the field and to document what was done, and it obliges the other side to pay the agreed fee. Applied to a pharmacy, the pharmacy owes a properly performed and properly recorded service, and the person who booked it owes what was agreed.
It is concluded when the offered service is accepted, which in everyday practice happens without anybody signing anything. A person books an appointment, arrives, is told what the service involves and what it costs, and agrees to go ahead. The agreement exists from that moment. Nothing further is required for it to bind either side. A written form changes nothing about whether the agreement exists and a great deal about whether its terms can later be proved, which is the honest argument for putting the scope, the price and the limits of the service in writing before it starts.
It is not the same document as consent, and treating the two as one is the mistake worth avoiding. Aufklärung und Einwilligung concerns the intervention itself, meaning that the person understood what would be done to their body and agreed to it, and without it the intervention is unlawful however sound the commercial agreement was. The Behandlungsvertrag concerns the service relationship, meaning who owes what to whom. Those are two separate questions, two separate records, and in practice two separate signatures where signatures are collected at all.
What follows from the agreement is the part that reaches into daily work. The duty of care is measured against what a competent pharmacy would do, which is why written procedures and honest documentation matter, and it is the yardstick against which Haftung is assessed if something goes wrong. The documentation duty is owed to the person as well as to the pharmacy. Where the service is a pharmazeutische Dienstleistung no fee is owed by the person at all, because the fee is claimed from the pDL fund on a Sonderbeleg, and yet the duties of care and documentation apply exactly as they would if the person had paid the invoice themselves.
This glossary entry is general information about German pharmacy law and practice. It is not legal advice. For binding guidance on your own pharmacy, contact your Landesapothekerkammer.
