Three SOPs-correct surgery, medication reconciliation, concentrated injectable medicines-have been developed and are being implemented and evaluated in multiple hospitals in seven participating countries. Nearly 5 years into the implementation, it is clear that this is just the beginning of what can be seen as an exercise in behavior management, asking whether health care workers can adapt their behaviors and environments to standardize care processes in widely varying hospital settings.
The Program for National Disease Management Guidelines (German DM-CPG Program) in Germany aims at the implementation of best-practice recommendations for prevention, acute care, rehabilitation and chronic care in the setting of disease management programs and integrated health-care systems. Like other guidelines, DM-CPG need to be assessed regarding their influence on structures, processes and outcomes of care. However, quality assessment in integrated health-care systems is challenging. On the one hand, a multitude of potential domains for measurement, actors and perspectives need to be considered. On the other hand, measures need to be identified that assess the function of the diagnostic and therapeutic chain in terms of cooperation and coordination of care. The article reviews methods and use of quality indicators in the context of the German DM-CPG Program.
Since the release of the report "To Err is Human" by the American Institute of Medicine (IOM) the subject "Medical Risks, Errors and Patient Safety" has gained increasing interest in literature. In Germany, neither extensive statistics nor generally significant epidemiological studies regarding common errors associated with damages caused to patients' health exist. In recent years the subject has become increasingly interesting both in specialist discussion and it the lay press; it has become evident that the different use of terms, especially those originating from the Anglo-Saxon language, can lead to misunderstandings. Hence, as one of the first steps of its action programme, the expert panel "Patient Safety" of the German Agency for Quality in Medicine has compiled a glossary of technical terms to provide adequate support to the discussion this important subject of nomenclature.
Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) are increasingly common in the German health care system. The German physicians' self-governmental body's position regarding CPGs as a tool of Evidence-based medicine (EBM) was described in a joint policy paper concerning quality in health care in late 1998. The German Medical Association (GMA) and the National Association for Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (NASHIP) stated that "the principles of EBM should be implemented into the German Health Care System" by the following means: to assess systematically and appraise critically the evidence in health care to develop evidence-based consensus CPGs for priority problems in health care to implement CPGs using graduate, post-graduate, and continuing medical education, as well as audits and CPG-based information management to evaluate quality in health care against the background of CPGs. The following paper will discuss the aims and scopes and the limits of this concept.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.