>> The research of the Institute for Health Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology (IVE) at the Philipps University of Marburg includes the following focal points:
• Health care research with a focus on assessing and analyzing the current quality of medical care
• Evaluation research: Evaluation of the introduction of new health policy measures/forms of care
• Development of methods for quality measurement and quality assessment of medical care (focus: development of measurement variables/quality indicators).

What sounds a bit complicated at first glance is best explained with a practical example. Such as the choice of hospital as part of the access issue, which Geraedts describes as elective. Although the choice of the right hospital is highly outcome-relevant, according to the findings of Geraedts and his team (1), many patients choose the hospital that is actually not the best for the above procedure, a necessary procedure or the procedure offered. Geraedts: “One of the reasons for this is that patients do not understand the information that is important for this choice but is actually available.” In other words: the quality reports available so far are not suitable for patients in their current form and presentation. So far, however, according to the Marburgers' findings, patients often prefer not the very nearest hospital, but the one after that, probably simply because they are more likely to hear bad experiences from a very close clinic than from one a little further away. This means that patients are on average 23 minutes away from the receiving clinic, which is also due to the high density of hospitals in Germany. That's why Marburg is working, among other things, on the question of how to enable patients to make the best decision for them, which in turn works best together with the treating doctors. “The doctor would play an essential role as an information broker or intermediary,” says Geraedts, whose institute conducted a study that evaluated exactly what information doctors need in order to be able to better make admission decisions. Of course, the number of cases plays a role, as does the complication rate, but also the experiences of other patients, but above all a doctor's own, often personal, experience with a clinic.
Another example would be the issue of patient safety, which, according to Geraedts, had been neglected in Germany for many years until the Harvard Medical Practice Study was published in the USA in the early 1990s and the true scope of the issue was highlighted in the book “Crossing the Quality Chasm” became public. Since then, the question has been asked in this country as to whether the quality of care is really as expected and, above all, whether patients are treated with high quality and safely or not. Because a systematic review by the German Council of Experts has now
health suggests that the existing foreign study findings on the quality and safety of inpatient care are sufficient, health care research, which Geraedt wants to be more precisely called health care research, receives almost no corresponding study applications in his opinion. “What nonsense,” says the scientist, who is therefore researching this topic in the outpatient sector.
According to Geraedt, data collection for a study on patient safety in outpatient care funded by the Innovation Fund has just been completed, in which more than 10,000 German citizens over the age of 40 were asked about their experiences with events relevant to patient safety. It can already be seen in the data evaluation phase that there are probably many more patient-related
safety-relevant events are reported than previously assumed. Of course, these include cases in which wrong actions were taken but no damage was caused. “But that could have turned out differently for the patient and could have been dangerous,” explains Geraedts, who is now starting data analysis with his team, especially in order to be able to describe starting points for potential for improvement at the system and population level. For him, that is exactly the task of classic health care research, namely to find out “who does what, when, how, why, with what effects in routine care and how can the whole thing be made better”.
These are exactly the determinants of the functionality of health systems that are being researched in Marburg. In order to research this, you need secondary data from health insurance companies and quality reports on the one hand, but also primary data collected specifically for specific questions on the other. For example, in the QUASCH research project that has just begun and is funded by the Innovation Fund, in which quality-assured stroke care in Hesse is being researched in comparison to the rest of Germany.
In addition to research, the Institute for Health Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology is closely integrated into training, more closely than many other chair holders in this genre. Because Geraedts sees the medical students far more often than other colleagues. He teaches medical sociology in the first and second semesters, then in cross-sectional area 3 in the 5th and 6th semesters, which covers health economics, the health system and public health. And then again when social medicine comes up in the 9th and 10th semesters, shortly before the internship. Geraedts: “That means we see the students from the 1st to the 10th semester and can discuss with them the big topic of what influence society has on health, and in ever new, different facets.”
In addition to this, Geraedt's factual
expert at the IMPP (Institute for Medical and Pharmaceutical Testing Questions) for the field of social medicine, a subject in which topics in many cross-sectional areas overlap, but which also has reference points to medical sociology.
Medical students in Marburg learn all of this from Geraedts and his team, who says: “We have to train our students in such a way that they later know which system they work in and which influences determine their work.” In this way, the Marburg students learn the importance of social conditions for health and illness and the social precautions for dealing with them - ultimately what the medical greats Salomon Neumann and Rudolf Virchow summarized as follows: “Medicine is a social science”. <<

Prof. Dr. med. Max Geraedts, M.San.
has been head of the Institute for Health Services Research and Clinical Epidemiology (IVE) at the Philipps University of Marburg since June 2016.
01/2009 – 05/2016: Chair and head of the Institute for Health Systems Research at the Univ. Witten/Herdecke. 05/2000 – 12/2008: Professorship for Public Health at the Heinrich-Heine-Univ. Dusseldorf. 2000: Habilitation in health system research at the Eberhard-Karls-Univ. Tübingen. 1998 – 2000: Scientific. Employee at the Institute for Medical Information Processing at the University. Tübingen. 1998: Recognition in the “Medical Quality Management” area of the South Württemberg District Medical Association”. 1997 – 1998: DFG research grant and postdoctoral fellowship “Health Services Research”, Univ. of California, San Francisco. 1993 – 1997: Scientific. Employee at the Institute for Medical Information Processing at the University. Tübingen. 1993: Wiss. Employee at the Institute for Statistics in Medicine at the University. Dusseldorf. 1993: Master of Public Health (Magister sanitatis, M.san.) at the Heinrich-Heine-Univ. Dusseldorf. 1991 – 1993: Studied health sciences and social medicine in Düsseldorf. 1991: Doctorate in medicine at Philipps-Univ. Marburg. 1989 – 1991: Medical activity at the Urological Clinic of the Marburg University Hospital. 1983 – 1989. Studied medicine at Philipps-Univ. Marburg.