GOÄ

GOÄ stands for Gebührenordnung für Ärzte. It is the schedule physicians use when they bill privately paying patients, and it lists services with defined rates and multipliers.

It comes up constantly in conversations about pharmacy diagnostics, usually with the wrong conclusion attached. A pharmacy is not a physician and does not bill under the GOÄ. A blood collection offered by a pharmacy is an apothekenübliche Dienstleistung paid for privately by the customer, and its price is set by the pharmacy.

The GOÄ still matters in two practical ways. It is the reference point customers carry in their heads, because a comparable service billed by a physician has a published rate. And where a physician is genuinely involved, for example in interpreting results, that physician bills their own part under the GOÄ, separately from anything the pharmacy charges.

Free pricing does not mean loose pricing. The total price should be stated in writing before the service, along with what it covers and what it does not. Advertising the price sits under the Heilmittelwerbegesetz, which permits factual statements and prohibits promises about outcomes.

Keeping the categories apart is the part that protects a pharmacy. A pharmazeutische Dienstleistung is financed from its own pot by the health insurers. A privately paid diagnostics offering is financed by the customer. The GOÄ belongs to neither of those two channels, and presenting a pharmacy price as a GOÄ rate would misdescribe what the customer is buying.

For pricing work the useful question is what the service costs the pharmacy to deliver and what it is worth to the customer, not what a physician would be entitled to charge for something adjacent.