The affiliated doctor system is a long-established form of integrative and cross-sectoral care (Hahn et al., 2015a, 2015b; Wienke and Mündnich, 2011). Both care approaches are also currently in the focus of German politics: (More) integrated care has been repeatedly demanded for almost 20 years now (Mühlbacher et al., 2006). The innovation fund, which became German law in the Supply Strengthening Act of June 10, 2015, provides 225 million euros per year to "new forms of care that aim to improve cross-sector care and have sufficient potential to be permanently included in care". (German Bundestag, 2015). In the classic understanding of affiliated doctors, a doctor who primarily works as a panel doctor/outpatient treats his patients using inpatient resources in a hospital in an affiliated department. For this purpose, the attending doctor has a contract with the hospital to be able to use the infrastructure (including staff) in the hospital. The attending doctor and the hospital are paid independently of each other. While the affiliated doctor accounts for his work using the uniform assessment scale (EBM), the hospital receives a so-called affiliated doctor DRG.

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