Vaccination in the pharmacy and the doctors nearby

A common reason against vaccinating in the pharmacy

“We don’t want to fall out with the doctors around us.” Hardly any sentence comes up as often as this one when pharmacies talk about vaccinating. It almost never comes as a refusal in principle. Mostly it sounds more like consideration: the practice in the same building or a few streets away has been sending patients over for years, people know each other, they say hello, and nobody wants to risk that relationship for a “few” vaccinations.

This reservation deserves a serious answer rather than an appeal. It describes a real dependency, and it is also the point at which an assumption about the practice next door turns into a lasting decision against a service that patients ask for.

Why the concern is justified

The restraint is not a lack of courage. It has three solid reasons.

First, the economic ties. A considerable share of turnover depends on prescriptions that come from a few practices nearby. Anyone who believes they are putting that flow at risk does the sums differently from someone who is only considering an extra service.

Second, the neighbourhood. In smaller towns the relationship with the practice is personal. A conflict there cannot be kept to the facts, it gets carried on in the street.

Third, the day-to-day cooperation. Queries about prescriptions, supply shortages, doses or care-home supply only work while the short line holds. That cooperation is worth more than a single vaccination appointment, and every pharmacy owner knows it.

What lies behind it: the campaign “Impfen beim Profi”

The conflict has long stopped being settled locally alone. In October 2026 the Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung (KBV), the federal association of statutory health insurance physicians, is starting a campaign under the slogan “Impfen beim Profi” (“get vaccinated by a professional”), which expressly warns against new services in pharmacies. The Pharmazeutische Zeitung reported this on 18 September 2026.

The KBV board, Andreas Gassen, Stephan Hofmeister and Sibylle Steiner, had restated its position beforehand on World Patient Safety Day. According to the board, diagnostics in the form of tests have no place in pharmacies and drugstores, and quick take-away services do not come from a professional and tend to unsettle people. For vaccinations, it said, doctors in private practice are the first point of contact, and it is about more than the jab in the upper arm. The campaign is meant to call on insured people to get vaccinated against influenza and other infectious diseases at the practice, and to have their vaccination status checked there.

Dirk Spelmeyer, chair of the board of the KV Westfalen-Lippe, the regional physicians’ association, went further. He said that outsourcing medical care risks human lives, and called the expansion of pharmacy services a reckless game with patient safety. He acknowledges the economic pressure on local pharmacies, but draws the opposite conclusion from it.

For the individual pharmacy this is an important piece of context. What arrives at the practice next door as a personal refusal is often the passing-on of a professional-policy line that was set at federal level.

The dispute has reached federal politics

The legal position has already been decided. With the Apothekenversorgung-Weiterentwicklungsgesetz, the law on the further development of pharmacy care, all inactivated vaccines were released for vaccination in pharmacies as of 2 July 2026, and giving the vaccination may be delegated to PTAs (pharmacy technicians), pharmacy engineers (Pharmazieingenieure) and pharmacy graduates in their practical year, once a physician has trained them and while a pharmacist supervises them.

At the Deutscher Apothekertag on 15 September 2026, federal health minister Carsten Linnemann addressed the conflict directly. He reported that doctors had contacted him in the days before and that some doctors’ representatives were speaking of an extension of competences. His view of it: with around 1.5 billion doctor contacts a year, which are to be reduced, low-threshold access through pharmacies is the right path for prevention and vaccination. He stressed that this path should be taken together with the doctors and the pharmacists.

What differs between association level and the reality on the ground

The sharpest wording comes from federal and state level. In everyday life between a pharmacy and the practice next door, the relationship often looks different, because both sides look after the same patients and know from each other where the gaps are.

Willingness in the sector is high. According to the ABDA, the Apothekenklima-Index 2026, for which 500 pharmacy managers are surveyed every year, indicates that the number of vaccinating pharmacies will probably double because of the new rules. Anyone waiting until the issue is settled is therefore probably waiting for others to settle it.

Four steps that resolve the concerns

1. Check whether you know it or only assume it

The first question is not how you convince the doctor, it is whether he has objected at all. In many cases no conversation has ever taken place, and the pharmacy decides against a service on the basis of an assumption. A refusal that has been voiced is something to negotiate. An assumed refusal is, to begin with, only an open question.

2. Name the concerns concretely

“The doctors are against it” is too vague to work on. Is it about turnover, the worry about duplicate structures, liability, documentation in the vaccination record, missing feedback to the practice? Each of these points has its own answer. Write the concerns down, your own and the ones you suspect at the practice, and then check which of them can be resolved.

3. Argue with vaccination gaps instead of market shares

Pharmacy vaccination reaches the people who do not make the trip to the practice for reasons of time, appointments or threshold. Flu vaccination, for example, shows how large this gap is. For people aged 60 and over, the WHO aims for a rate of 75%. In the 2024/25 season, 34.5% of all people aged 60 and over in Germany were vaccinated against flu. Vaccination rates are low for other pathogens too. That is also the logic behind the political decision: additional low-threshold access, not a replacement. Anyone who puts this argument first in the conversation leaves the level of competition on which the conflict is otherwise fought. After all, it is about working together on the health of patients.

4. Seek the conversation, with moderation if need be

The most effective step is a direct exchange with the practice, before both sides take their positions through association statements. If the relationship is tense or the history is difficult, a neutral person who knows both sides and moderates the conversation helps, for example from the quality circle, the physician network or a shared care network.

A small start instead of the big solution is also possible: a single vaccination offer that visibly relieves the practice and does not fall in its core hours. That is easier to talk about than a complete vaccination portfolio.

What the reservation means on closer inspection

Behind the sentence about the doctors nearby there is rarely a conflict that has been fought out. Usually there is a conversation that never took place. As long as the refusal is only assumed, an assumption decides the range of services of the pharmacy, and permanently so.

The dispute between professional bodies will go on. But it does not replace what can be discussed between two buildings on the same street. The objection is therefore less a limit than an open question.