AOK warning of new clinics without added value

AOK report warns of new clinics without added value

02/21/2015

Patients suffering from cancer can be lucky and reach a high-standard hospital. But with many other illnesses, the AOK is more likely to get into a relatively bad clinic.

Nationwide good care of patients prevented
According to the AOK, enormous differences in the quality of hospitals and the proliferation of specialized treatment centers prevent widespread good care for patients in Germany. As the news agency dpa reports, the board of the AOK Federal Association, Uwe Deh, demanded at the presentation of the „Hospital Report 2015“ in Berlin, that the federal and state governments should pave the way for the establishment of many more such centers in their hospital reform. But unlike today with clear quality standards.

Reform must not become the financial peak for clinics
The planned reform should not only be a huge injection of funds for hospitals. Today, for example, every clinic should be called a center, regardless of the quality. „Instead, nationwide uniform standards for quality and financing are needed“, so deh. Otherwise, the facilities would probably be declared to specialized clinics on a large scale for sales-interest. The box office official welcomed that the responsible working group of federation and countries redefined clinic centers. „However, it is important to make it clear in the future that clinics that do not meet the requirements of centers may not even make certain treatments“, demanded Deh.

Improved patient outcomes
As the clinic expert of the scientific institute of the AOK, Jörg Friedrich, explained, today both patients and health professionals would face the problem, the existing ones „beads“ to find under the clinics. Health Economist Jürgen Wasem said: „Nobody would design the hospital landscape on the green table today.“ However, according to Deh, there have also been recent advances: „Despite the lack of orientation from health policy, structural change has worked.“ For example, existing cancer centers with meaningful certificates from the German Cancer Society would have improved patient outcomes. In addition, research has shown that the treatment of colorectal cancer patients in certified centers is often better. According to this, the tumor is more often completely removed in the operations in the centers compared to other clinics, which is of great importance for the success of the subsequent therapy.

Tumor patients can be treated better in special centers
„There are either hospitals, we need them urgently, or those we can close - in between´It's nothing“, said Wasem. Today there are 1,010 centers at clinics where cancer patients have been proven to be better treated than at other clinics, "said lead cancer certification agency Simone Wesselmann. If a department can not have such a certificate, then often the reason is that it misses minimum standards. For example, in breast cancer, they would have to demonstrate the experience of at least 100 cases a year. And for lung cancer, there should be at least 200 cases a year. It is said that the formation of centers in all therapies makes sense, where several disciplines would be needed, such as diabetes. The „quality Report“, Each year, commissioned by the Federal Joint Committee of Hospitals, Doctors and Health Insurance Funds, the Institute for Applied Quality Assurance and Research in Health Care (AQUA Institute) also came to the conclusion in the past years that there are very strong quality differences in the clinics in Germany there. However, the majority of hospitals offer good quality in terms of treatment and diagnoses. (Ad)