Abstracts by keywords: Clinical Economics
Economic aspects of health care have become significantly more important in the last 20 years and justify the introduction of health economics into the training of medical students. That is why the cross-sectional area Q3 “Health Economics / Health System / Public Health” was anchored in the medical licensing regulations in 2002. The design of the topics and the form of teaching was left to the institutes offering them, so that the theoretical content and the time scope of these lessons are not uniformly defined. The subject is not tied to any specific institute and is therefore shaped in Germany from the perspectives of different academic sub-fields. This results in major differences in the teaching offerings. The “Health System” and “Public Health Care” sub-areas of Q3 result from existing care structures, while the “Health Economics” sub-area has so far only existed as a discipline in economics. In addition to the 21 compulsory subjects, the medical course includes 14 cross-sectional subjects (e.g. Q1: epidemiology/medical biometry/medical informatics, Q7: medicine of aging and the elderly, Q14: palliative medicine) as well as block internships and elective subjects.
04.06.2018
The German Medical Association defines health services research (1) as the scientific study of the provision of health-related products and services to individuals and the population (2) under everyday conditions. For this purpose, health services research examines how access to health and health care, how its quality and costs and ultimately how our health and well-being are influenced by the financing systems, by social and individual factors, by organizational structures and processes and by health technologies ( 3). The observation units include individuals, families, populations, organizations, institutions, municipalities, etc. In addition to this definition of content, the German Medical Association offers a methodological/functional definition of health services research, describes the general objective of health services research and names the systematics/components (input-throuput- Output-outcome) of health services research (1). In our article we would like to expand this characterization of health services research to include five further tasks: the distinction between care and research, the economic definition of over- and under-care, the description of the data and methods required for health services research, and the distinction between economically complete and incomplete health care analyses and ultimately the formal medical (in addition to the commercial) assessment of effort and return, including a method for identifying patient-relevant endpoints.