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TL;DRImportquote / Importförderung is the German reimbursement rule in §129 Abs. 1 Satz 1 Nr. 2 SGB V that obliges pharmacies to dispense a lower-priced imported medicine instead of the reference pack, provided the import undercuts that reference pack by a legally defined price margin.
The rule has two layers that are routinely confused. The statutory layer, §129 SGB V, defines which import counts as "preisgünstig" (low-priced) and therefore qualifies for preferential dispensing. The contractual layer, the Rahmenvertrag über die Arzneimittelversorgung nach §129 Abs. 2 SGB V between GKV-Spitzenverband and Deutscher Apothekerverband, defines how much a pharmacy has to deliver in aggregate, and what happens if it does not.
This entry covers the reimbursement mechanism. For what the imported products themselves are, see Parallelimport (a pack sourced in another EU or EEA state) and Reimport (a pack originally made for the German market, exported, then brought back).
No. This is the single most common piece of outdated working logic in the field, and pricing models still built on it produce wrong answers.
Two separate reforms dismantled the old design:
So the pharmacy is no longer measured on how many import packs it sells, but on how much money it saves the payer within the import-relevant market. Miss the target in a calendar quarter and the invoice for the last settlement month of that quarter is reduced by the shortfall (§13 Abs. 6 Rahmenvertrag). Beat it and the excess is credited as a non-payable Einsparguthaben that can offset a future shortfall.
Verbatim from §129 Abs. 1 Satz 1 Nr. 2 SGB V, the import price is compared against the reference pack after deduction of the statutory rebates under §130a Abs. 1, 1a, 1b, 2, 3a and 3b SGB V.
| Price of the reference pack (Bezugsarzneimittel) | Required price advantage of the import | Statutory wording |
|---|---|---|
| up to and including 100 euro | at least 15 percent lower | "mindestens 15 Prozent niedriger" |
| over 100 euro up to and including 300 euro | at least 15 euro lower | "mindestens 15 Euro niedriger" |
| over 300 euro | at least 5 percent lower | "mindestens 5 Prozent niedriger" |
The economic effect of the tiering is asymmetric. In the middle band a fixed 15 euro is a shrinking relative discount as the price rises, so it is the easiest band to clear. In the top band, 5 percent of a high-priced specialty pack is a large absolute sum, which is why the tiering was designed to keep the incentive meaningful at the expensive end while capping the payer's exposure.
The same GSAV amendment appended an exclusion to §129 Abs. 1 SGB V: "Satz 1 Nummer 2 gilt nicht für biotechnologisch hergestellte Arzneimittel und antineoplatische Arzneimittel zur parenteralen Anwendung." Biotechnologically manufactured medicines and antineoplastic medicines for parenteral use are therefore outside the import preference. The Rahmenvertrag mirrors this in §13 Abs. 1, dating the carve-out to the promulgation of the Implantateregister law and removing those products from the import-relevant market.
A further exclusion sits at the end of §129 Abs. 1 SGB V: Satz 1 Nummer 2 does not apply where a determination under §130b Abs. 1c has been made for the prescribed medicine.
Rebate contracts win. §129 Abs. 1 SGB V states for imports and their reference packs that the dispensing of a medicine covered by an agreement under §130a Abs. 8 "hat ... Vorrang vor der Abgabe nach Satz 1 Nummer 2". The Rahmenvertrag operationalises the same order: §11 gives priority to the rebate-covered pack, §12 then covers the four lowest-priced packs, and only §13 governs the low-priced import. See Rabattvertrag and aut idem for the substitution logic that sits above this step.
| Party | What the rule does | Operational consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Importer / parallel distributor | Defines the exact price gap that makes a pack dispensable | Pricing must be recalculated per PZN whenever the reference pack crosses the 100 or 300 euro band boundary |
| Originator / marketing authorisation holder | Creates a regulated channel that diverts volume from the original pack | Own price moves can push a pack into a band where imports clear the threshold more easily |
| Pharmacy | Sets a quarterly savings target, not a unit quota | Shortfall is deducted from the quarter's last settlement month |
| Payer (GKV) | Harvests the price differential | Effect is measured in savings, not in import share |
The practical test is always the same calculation: take the reference pack's price net of statutory rebates, place it in the correct band, and check whether the import clears the required margin. That calculation is only as good as the price data and the import-to-original link behind it.
Testing the price advantage needs three things at once: an import or reimport marker on the pack, a link from the import PZN to the pack it references, and the full price cascade for both. pharmazie.com is an aggregator of licensed data and carries these as fields alongside the article master data.
Scoped to this task, the useful part is that the price cascade and the import relation are queryable per PZN in one place, so a band assignment can be computed without joining two separate feeds. See PZN for the identifier itself.
One honest limitation: pharmazie.com holds the price and relation fields you need to compute the margin, but it does not adjudicate dispensability. Whether a specific dispensing is reimbursable also depends on the payer-specific rebate contracts in force on the dispensing date and on the supplementary agreements under §129 Abs. 5 SGB V, which sit outside the article master data. The article data supports the calculation; it does not replace the Rahmenvertrag check in the pharmacy software.
