Communication in healthcare sector:KV-Connect to be switched off, switch to KIM

The KV-Connect communication service (communication service of the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians), which has been used by doctors, psychotherapists, hospitals, and other medical service providers in the secure network of the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians for almost ten years, will be switched off on 20 October 2025.

Doctors, hospitals, and laboratories were able to use it to send and receive documents and findings “directly from their IT systems in end-to-end encrypted form. The data is doubly protected: by a message signature against manipulation and by asymmetric encryption against unauthorized access,” informed kv.digital, a subsidiary of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, which is responsible for this, on its website.

In the future, data exchange for most applications will take place exclusively via the new KIM standard (communication in medicine), which, according to Gematik, has now become established in the healthcare sector. Applications such as the electronic treatment and cost plan (eHKS) or 1-click billing have already been converted, as reported by the Ärztezeitung, among others. Doctors have also had to be able to receive electronic doctor's letters via KIM for more than a year. This also affects other processes, such as the retrieval of referral codes for the appointment service.

For most practices, little will change as a result of the changeover, as the integration is largely carried out in the background by software manufacturers, KVs, and data collection centers. However, anyone still actively using KV-Connect should contact the software manufacturer or IT service provider in good time. New KV-Connect accesses will no longer be issued from mid-2025, as announced by the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians of Lower Saxony, among others.

(mack)