Schizophrenia: AQUA quality assurance report published

12.02.2016 10:16

The AQUA Institute has published a report in which, for the first time, psychiatric care is the focus of external statutory quality assurance (QA). This is a cross-sector QA procedure that addresses adult patients with schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders. AQUA prepared the report on behalf of the Federal Joint Committee.

“Strengthening care across sector boundaries will lead to a better quality of life, especially for people with serious mental illnesses,” says Prof. Joachim Szecsenyi, Managing Director of the AQUA Institute.

In order to map the quality of care, AQUA developed 27 indicators, which are distributed across four survey instruments: specification for social data from health insurance companies, inpatient case-related QS documentation and facility-related surveys (inpatient and outpatient).

Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders are serious mental illnesses. The majority of diseases are recurrent or even chronic. In addition to an increased rate of suicides and accidents, it also carries an increased risk of somatic diseases such as circulatory or respiratory diseases, which leads to a significantly reduced life expectancy. Projections based on routine data showed that around 729,000 people in Germany were ill with it in 2012. The average age was 53.5 years and 54 percent of them were female, according to the AQUA Institute.

The report presented is an important milestone. The Federal Joint Committee will decide on the further implementation of this QS procedure.