Original article
Pharmaceutical spending is currently the focus of the health policy debate. However, one aspect has barely been addressed so far: the significant regional differences. As figures from INSIGHT Health show, the spending differences between the KV regions amount to over 150 euros per insured person.
24.09.2012
Doctor networks have a number of business advantages over individual practices. However, the current state of medical networks is, on average, still far from professional. The number of doctor networks that can also implement their advantages is increasing. As the importance of doctor networks increases, the risk of monopoly care also increases. Adequate answers must first be found for this risk. Management skills are and will remain essential in the development and management of doctor networks.
23.09.2012
On July 1, 2008, the AOK Baden-Württemberg, the General Practitioner Contract Association eG (HÄVG) and the MEDIVerbund concluded the nation's first family doctor-centered care contract (HZV) in accordance with Section 73b SGB V. In this contract, care-relevant quality goals were linked to process management in order to better manage patient care. In order to enable the successful implementation of the contract, comprehensive IT-supported solutions had to be created. The “ICW core” as a software module without its own user interface for integration into the practice management systems (PVS) as well as a telematics infrastructure for connecting doctors online played an important role here. Extensive practical experience has been gained in the last two years.
23.09.2012
The German healthcare system is in a “financial crisis”. The expenditure on services is constantly increasing due to demographic change and the possibilities of medical progress. At the same time, the number of contributors is decreasing. Politicians have been trying to address the existing financing gap for years through “cost containment laws”. The introduction of competitive elements is a starting point for solving the existing problem.
23.09.2012
The German healthcare system is a powerful and adaptive system in which discount and direct contracts are currently one of the most important competitive options for a health insurance company in order to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of care and to create transparency with the help of accompanying scientific studies. Ultimately, supply management as a sensible concept can only be decided through competition and not through government guidelines and regulation.
23.09.2012
TITEL-INTERVIEW: Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Matthias Schrappe, Direktor des Instituts für Patientensicherheit der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn und Tagungspräsident des 9. Deutschen Kongresses für Versorgungsforschung: „Safety ist auf dem Weg in die Evidenz.“
23.09.2012
Health and health care is and will increasingly be characterized by direct contracts. This is particularly true if the service providers use direct contracts with the additional instruments made available to them in order to overcome the sector boundary. From the patient's perspective, it may be a great advantage that the same doctors carry out the pre- and post-hospital treatment as well as the in-patient treatment themselves. Quality improvements and the development of efficiency reserves can also result for service providers in the healthcare system. The approach of improving the statutory health insurance system and consolidating it financially through competition and breaking through traditional structures appears promising.
23.09.2012
The development in health care includes the implementation of contracts between different players as one of the main regulating factors. Contracts don't run by themselves; it's not enough to agree on content and sign it. The evaluation must be taken into account and planned as early as when the contract is concluded, and not only after 3 years, but continuously and concomitantly. The appropriate source for the information, as well as the type and amount of information required, depends on the type of contract and the content of the contract. In order to consider selective contracts with doctors or groups, data and evaluations from random samples of relevant size, which also allow regionally valid considerations and extrapolations, are required. Evaluations from billing data are not sufficient here because they do not adequately reflect medical behavior.
23.09.2012
On the effectiveness and efficiency of me-too lists. An exemplary study using intranasal steroids. For the treatment of acute or chronic sinusitis, corticosteroid-containing nasal sprays are known to be an effective and safe first-line therapeutic agent when used once daily [Bousquet et al. 2001: 108; Herman 2007: 21; Nielsen et al. 2001: 61; Weiner et al. 1998: 317]. […]
23.09.2012
The article understands the healthcare system in general and the statutory health insurance system in particular as a complex adaptive system. After an explanation of the essential properties of complex adaptive systems (dynamics, feedback, self-organization, nonlinearity and path dependence), empirical examples from the field of statutory health insurance explain this understanding