Germany starts publishing hospital reports on internet
http://www.100md.com
《英国医生杂志》
Health insurance companies have started publishing reports of the quality of German hospitals on the internet. The hospitals were legally obliged to submit their standardised reports by the end of August 2005, and almost 2000 of the country抯 2200 hospitals met the target date.
The hospital reports, which can be found under the names of the respective home towns, contain detailed information about hospital structures and medical procedures, the number of operations and beds, details of medical equipment, the qualifications of doctors and nurses, internal and external evaluations of the hospital, and the specialisations of hospital departments.
They have to be renewed every two years. Federal health minister Ulla Schmidt welcomed the initiative and appealed to doctors and patients to take advantage of it.
But critics from the health insurance companies say the scheme does not provide sufficient information for doctors and patients to be able to choose the best hospital treatments available. The data show the number of certain operations done by each hospital and the methods used, but the reports do not include outcome data.
The structure and content of the standardised quality reports were agreed by a committee with representatives from the Federal Medical Council, health insurance companies, the German Hospital Association, and the Federal Nursing Council.
"The data are not complete, because hospitals are only allowed to publish the 10 most common medical procedures," said Godehild Hesse from the largest German health insurance company Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK). Large hospitals with a broad range of medical treatments are not able to present their entire spectrum of medical care. Sometimes details about operations for rare conditions are not mentioned because the operations are less common than the more common procedures like appendectomy or cholecystectomy. So the figures do not reveal which hospitals carry out the most of these rare operations.
Furthermore, the critics point out that the number of procedures does not necessarily coincide with high quality and data on outcome and mortality are lacking. They are not provided by the hospitals and would have to be added by the health insurance companies.
The Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse has therefore decided that it will develop an electronic system by which hospitals?and patients?data will be merged. It will be possible to compare hospitals, taking into account the different health status of patients with the same disease. The company will work together with the private hospital chain Helios Kliniken, which published an additional quality report containing mortality data this year.
Currently a direct comparison of hospitals is not possible. The search engine on the quality report homepage manages to find only the respective hospitals according to location, medical specialties, or procedures.(Heidelberg Annette Tuffs)
The hospital reports, which can be found under the names of the respective home towns, contain detailed information about hospital structures and medical procedures, the number of operations and beds, details of medical equipment, the qualifications of doctors and nurses, internal and external evaluations of the hospital, and the specialisations of hospital departments.
They have to be renewed every two years. Federal health minister Ulla Schmidt welcomed the initiative and appealed to doctors and patients to take advantage of it.
But critics from the health insurance companies say the scheme does not provide sufficient information for doctors and patients to be able to choose the best hospital treatments available. The data show the number of certain operations done by each hospital and the methods used, but the reports do not include outcome data.
The structure and content of the standardised quality reports were agreed by a committee with representatives from the Federal Medical Council, health insurance companies, the German Hospital Association, and the Federal Nursing Council.
"The data are not complete, because hospitals are only allowed to publish the 10 most common medical procedures," said Godehild Hesse from the largest German health insurance company Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK). Large hospitals with a broad range of medical treatments are not able to present their entire spectrum of medical care. Sometimes details about operations for rare conditions are not mentioned because the operations are less common than the more common procedures like appendectomy or cholecystectomy. So the figures do not reveal which hospitals carry out the most of these rare operations.
Furthermore, the critics point out that the number of procedures does not necessarily coincide with high quality and data on outcome and mortality are lacking. They are not provided by the hospitals and would have to be added by the health insurance companies.
The Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse has therefore decided that it will develop an electronic system by which hospitals?and patients?data will be merged. It will be possible to compare hospitals, taking into account the different health status of patients with the same disease. The company will work together with the private hospital chain Helios Kliniken, which published an additional quality report containing mortality data this year.
Currently a direct comparison of hospitals is not possible. The search engine on the quality report homepage manages to find only the respective hospitals according to location, medical specialties, or procedures.(Heidelberg Annette Tuffs)