Prof. Dr. Axel Ekkernkamp new president of IQM
19.06.2023 19:02
The IQM board president was appointed at the 15th general meeting. The new president of IQM is following the departure of Dr. Francesco De Meo (Chairman of the Management Board of Helios Health GmbH) in September 2022, the acting chairman and representative of the public law support group to date, Prof. Dr. Axel Ekkernkamp. He is medical director and managing director of the BG Klinikum Trauma Hospital Berlin as well as CMO of BG Kliniken, which is one of the founding members of IQM.
Prof. Ekkernkamp is a specialist in surgery, orthopedics and trauma surgery, has numerous additional qualifications and was appointed to the chair for trauma surgery at the Greifswald University Medical Center in 1999. He has been dealing with the topics of quality assurance and quality management in medical associations, associations, organizations for more than 30 years and has been a leader at the German Society for Surgery for many years. From 2001 he was chairman of the hospital committee according to § 137c and deputy. Chairman of the coordination committee according to Section 137e SGB V - both committees were merged into the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) in 2003.
“IQM has grown significantly since it was founded and, due to the current changes – be it the shortage of skilled workers, the aging society or the issue of sustainability – the opinions of the members should be taken into account even more through their representation on the board,” says Prof. Dr. Axel Ekkernkamp. In detail, with the aim of better and equal representation of the members, the composition of the board will be adjusted and in the future there will be two representatives from each sponsoring group as board members and one director from each sponsoring group on the board.
In addition, the former IQM board president Dr. Francesco De Meo was awarded the first IQM honorary membership. “I am pleased to be able to continue to be part of IQM even after I leave as president. I will be happy to support the association with advice and support,” said Dr. Francesco De Meo during the award ceremony.
The Quality Medicine Initiative
The IQM eV is a non-profit association of hospitals from Germany and Switzerland whose goals are to improve the quality of medical treatment in hospitals and to deal openly with errors. The participating hospitals have agreed to apply three principles: measuring quality with routine data, publishing the results and conducting peer reviews. For 15 years, IQM has been continuously working on the further development of methods to provide its members with innovative and user-friendly instruments to improve the quality of their treatment. Around 500 hospitals are currently members of the Quality Medicine Initiative. Together, the members currently care for almost 8 million inpatient treatment cases, which corresponds to a share of almost 40% in Germany and around 35% in Switzerland.