Original article
Hospital Structure Act. Supply Structure Act. Patient Rights Act. Care Strengthening Act. Act to strengthen health promotion and prevention, or Prevention Act for short. Anyone who wants to write the various legal reforms of 2015 without errors is either an experienced typist or: dictated. What was previously almost impossible is made possible by software called “Dragon” from Nuance. Of course, it is also possible to dictate terms like “Hospital Structure Act” or “Supply Structure Act” in the Basic application, which is available from 169 euros, but it takes a while until the software is trained on words like these and then error-free implemented. But in the “Medical Practice Edition” specification, the developers have already done this work. That's why investing in such software can be worthwhile for doctors and hospitals, as two current studies suggest.
31.03.2015
Eines der Schwerpunktthemen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft GESUNDHEIT 65 PLUS ist das Medikationsmanagement, da gerade im höheren Lebensalter Multimorbidität und damit auch die gleichzeitige Anwendung mehrerer Arzneimittel eher die Regel als die Ausnahme ist. In diesem Zusammenhang ist das vom Bundeskabinett am 27.5.2015 beschlossene E-Health-Gesetz ein wichtiger und notwendiger Schritt zur Verbesserung der IT-Sicherheit im Gesundheitswesen, der das Stammdatenmanagement ebenso einschließt wie die Speicherung von Notfalldaten auf der elektronischen Gesundheitskarte oder die elektronische Übermittlung von Arztbriefen.
31.03.2015
The king is dead – long live the king! After the widely considered failure of the initial funding for integrated care contracts under Section 140d of the German Social Code, Book V (SGB V), the Innovation Fund is now supposed to fix things: modernize healthcare, particularly through cross-sectoral care models, and align it with the goal of higher quality care. Doubts about achieving this goal are warranted, especially since the Innovation Fund remains bound to the traditional corporatist framework and is focused on the traditional, jointly and uniformly organized standard care system. In any case, it has little to do with the "solidarity-based competitive order" that politicians still programmatically subscribe to. This does not deter AOK Baden-Württemberg from continuing to actively seek opportunities and assume responsibility for independently shaping the best possible healthcare system in the interest of its insured members.
31.03.2015
Providing care for an increasing number of elderly and chronically ill people presents health insurance companies with major challenges. eHealth services offer the opportunity to ensure that people – regardless of their age or whether they live in the city or the countryside – continue to receive good care in the future and under the given circumstances.
31.03.2015
The draft Hospital Structure Act (KHSG), intended to improve the quality of treatment and the security of care in hospitals, has been generally welcomed, but many are calling for improvements. The law, which is scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2016, is meant to implement certain key points presented by the federal-state working group on hospital reform on December 5, 2014, after more than six months of deliberations. At the public hearing of the Health Committee in September, institutions, associations, and organizations issued their statements.
31.03.2015
Nationwide, over 3.7 million insured individuals (5 percent of all those with statutory health insurance) and 16,000 general practitioners participate in the primary care physician-centered care (PCC) program – and this number is rising. Over a third of the participating patients are insured with AOK Baden-Württemberg, which has been offering PCC for seven years. INSIGHT Health has access to billing data from these PCC participants, enabling an in-depth analysis of the care model from the perspective of outpatient drug supply.
31.03.2015
Since the publication of the coalition agreement, the Innovation Fund has been one of the most discussed topics in healthcare. Now, at an event hosted by the Federal Association of Managed Care, the nonpartisan G-BA Chairman, Professor Josef Hecken, provided an insight into the current implementation status: Hecken aims to modernize healthcare structures and processes through relatively large-scale projects involving at least one health insurance company. The application process will be a single-stage process for innovative forms of care and a two-stage process for healthcare research projects. The first funding announcement is planned for December.
31.03.2015
Dr. Martin Danner, Federal Managing Director of the German Association of Self-Help Groups (BAG Selbsthilfe) since 2008 and spokesperson for the Coordination Committee of Patient Representation of the German Disability Council (DBR) and the BAG Selbsthilfe within the Federal Joint Committee, vehemently advocates for greater patient participation at all levels in an interview with MVF and calls for a paradigm shift from policymakers. Ultimately, Danner argues, policymakers must commit to finally "structurally strengthening patients as equal actors within the system" so that the system can transform from a recipient of services to an active participant, because in an era of pure competition, patient interests can only be represented by patients themselves.
31.03.2015
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) form the central foundation for demonstrating the efficacy and safety of pharmaceuticals. However, this study design reaches its limits with certain research questions and drug classes, particularly in health services research and drug evaluation. A joint workshop of the German Association of Managed Care (BMC), the German Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (BPI), and the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa) aimed to clarify how RCTs can be meaningfully supplemented by insights generated through alternative study designs. The workshop took place in mid-October at the SRH University in Berlin.
31.03.2015
Chaired by Univ.-Prof. em. Dr. Prof. hc Edmund AM Neugebauer (DNVF) and Dr. Christoph Veit (IQTiG) spoke to Prof. Dr. Joachim Szecsenyi (AQUA), who presented the developments in legal quality assurance over the last five years and the current status in 2015, and Prof. Dr. Max Geraedts (University of Witten/Herdecke), who introduced the perspective of health services research (and received opposition from the former). On the other hand, Dr. Regina Klakow-Franck (G-BA), who spoke on the topic of “Legal quality assurance within the framework of the new version of SGB V 137a” and Prof. Dr. Matthias Schrappe (Cologne), who spoke about “Legal quality assurance: opportunities for the further development of the healthcare system?”