Since the late 1990s, intensive efforts have been made in Germany to enhance integration within the fragmented health care sector. Disease management programmes (DMPs) represent an attempt to improve the care for the chronically ill, which is known to be deficient in particular for diabetics. A representative telephone survey was carried out of participants in the DMP for diabetics (customers of the BARMER Health Insurance, Neubrandenburg) to investigate preferences, motives and assessments of participants (random sample, net=124, June 2005). The interviewees were generally aged 61 years or older (77.4%), and two-thirds of them had suffered from diabetes or received treatment for more than 5 years. During the programme, the proportion consulting a specially trained diabetology physician doubled to 31%. The assessment of the quality of care improved markedly; 19% of the participants reported an improvement in their health status. The main reasons given for participating in the DMP were anticipated improvement in the quality of care and the activation of the patient role. Analyses indicate that those who reported the most benefit from the programme are the core group of the elderly chronically ill. However, as this group was particularly well informed about their own disease, attention should always be paid to the possibility of social selection processes in such health programmes. Quality studies in the past have not provided a comprehensive picture, so quality assurance studies should be carried out in order to validate surveys addressing participants in DMPs, and conversely surveys of DMP participants should be conducted to validate quality assurance findings. Surveys of health insurance customers can provide valuable information about the opinions of the patients themselves and allow the investigation of social influences. Considerable work remains necessary in Germany to develop appropriate methodologies.
VIETBIO [Innovative approaches to biodiversity discovery and characterisation in Vietnam] is a bilateral German-Vietnamese research and capacity building project focusing on the development and transfer of new methods and technology towards an integrated biodiversity discovery and monitoring system for Vietnam. Dedicated field training and testing of innovative methodologies were undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park as part and with support of the project, which led to the new biodiversity data and records made available in this article collection. VIETBIO is a collaboration between the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science (MfN), the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin (BGBM) and the Vietnam National Museum of Nature (VNMN), the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR), the Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE), as well as the Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB); all Vietnamese institutions belong to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST). The article collection "VIETBIO" (https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.coll.63) reports original results of recent biodiversity recording and survey work undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park, northern Vietnam, under the framework of the VIETBIO project. The collection consist of this “main” cover paper – characterising the study area, the general project approaches and activities, while also giving an extensive overview on previous studies from this area – followed by individual papers for higher taxa as studied during the project. The main purpose is to make primary biodiversity records openly available, including several new and interesting findings for this biodiversity-rich conservation area. All individual data papers with their respective primary records are expected to provide useful baselines for further taxonomic, phylogenetic, ecological and conservation-related studies on the respective taxa and, thus, will be maintained as separate datasets, including separate GUIDs also for further updating.
The healthcare system in Germany is characterised by fragmentation and a lack of communication between the various sectors of care. Since the late 1990s, intensive efforts have been made to enhance integration. Disease Management Programs (DMPs) represent an attempt to improve the care for the chronically ill which is known to be deficient, in particular for diabetics. As quality assurance studies do not yet provide a comprehensive picture and, in the absence of convincing evaluations, surveys of health insurance customers are particularly interesting and can provide information about preferences, motivation and evaluation of the participants in the DMPs. Thus, one year into a program started in July 2004, a representative survey was carried out of participants in the DMP for diabetics (customers of BARMER Health Insurance, Neubrandenburg). (Random sample net=124). The participants were generally age 61 years or older (77.4%), and two-thirds of them had suffered from diabetes or received treatment for more than 5 years. During the program, the proportion consulting a diabetes specialist had doubled to 31%. The assessment of the quality of care had improved markedly; 19% of the participants reported an improvement in their health status. The main reasons given for participating in the program were an anticipated improvement in the quality of care and an activation of the patient's role. Analyses indicate that those who reported the most benefit from the program are the core group of the elderly chronically ill. But as this group was particularly well informed about their own disease, attention should always be paid to the possibility of social selection processes in such health programs. In future, quality assurance studies should be carried out in order to validate surveys addressing participants in DMPs and, conversely, surveys of DMP participants should be conducted to validate quality assurance findings.
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