Reimann: Synchronize legislative proposals for hospital reform
30.08.2023 10:55
On August 30th The specialist hearing on the draft for a hospital transparency law will take place. It provides for the creation of a “transparency directory” on the quality of treatment in German hospitals. The CEO of the AOK Federal Association, Dr. Carola Reimann, expressly welcomes this plan, but also criticizes some details of the draft:
“It is good that in the future patients will receive even more valid and easy-to-understand information on how to choose a hospital based on quality. The directory planned by the Federal Minister of Health can significantly advance quality transparency in inpatient care. This transparency offensive should also encourage those responsible in the clinics to continually strive to improve the quality of treatment. We have already done preliminary work on this topic with our health navigator, which can be built upon - especially in the evaluation and understandable presentation of hospital-related treatment quality based on the routine data from the health insurance companies.
Some hospital authorities are already very committed to quality. For example, the hospitals in the Quality Medicine Initiative publish a whole range of quality information on a voluntary basis that goes beyond the mandatory reports. These clinics have no reason to fear the new requirements - on the contrary. The point is that patients can identify and select clinics that lead the way when it comes to quality. In addition to top-quality medicine in specialized clinics, we still have too many hospitals that carry out complicated procedures without the necessary experience and technical equipment.
However, so that the planned transparency directory can develop its full potential and become a useful component of hospital reform, the two legislative proposals should be synchronized with one another. It therefore makes little sense that the Hospital Transparency Act predetermines specific service groups before the actual hospital reform law is available. There is a risk of contradictions between the service groups on the portal, the service groups that will apply in the future and the allocations at the state level.
It is also irritating that the tasks of the Institute for Quality Assurance and Transparency in Healthcare (IQTIG) provided for in the Hospital Transparency Act should take priority over all other tasks of the institute. This means that important tasks of joint self-government are being pushed back. Whether this is really necessary and useful should be checked again. The data collected should not only be used for the transparency directory, but should also be made available to the statutory health insurance companies to inform their insured persons. Integration into the health insurance companies’ hospital search portals, which have been established for years, would significantly increase the reach of the information.”