Is Lienz too far away for a personal assessment?
"The legal situation is clear," said Achitz in the "Bürgeranwalt" programme on 28 June 2025, "both the ASVG and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities require that aids such as power wheelchairs must be made available if they are necessary to enable people to have personal mobility." In the specific case of Gabriela R., Achitz criticised the questionable reasons used by ÖGK Tirol to refuse the wheelchair: "First they said she could still walk with a rollator anyway and therefore didn't need a wheelchair. Then later: she is too ill to use the power wheelchair safely." The head physician at the ÖGK apparently concluded this from general information about the illness. However, ÖGK did not want to be personally convinced of this. According to Gabriela R.'s family, ÖGK would only carry out such assessments in Innsbruck and the surrounding area - the journey to East Tyrol, where R. lives, was apparently too far.
