Visitations (audits) are considered an instrument of external quality assurance by which the structural and organizational set-up of health facilities can be assessed on site by external experts. The Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund (including the former Bundesversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte, BfA, the statutory pension insurance agency for white collar employees) is the largest body responsible for rehabilitation in Germany, and it regularly carries out visitations in the approximately 650 rehab centres it sends its patients to. The project presented in this article aimed at developing a manual with detailed descriptions of the procedures and criteria of the assessment, as well as at checking the inter-rater-reliability of the assessment. The manual was developed in cooperation with experts of the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund. It contains a description of the areas to be assessed during a visitation as well as leading questions and criteria for the evaluation of single features. The manual was examined in "test visitations" in 10 centres, each of which was visited by three visitation teams (1 medical and 1 administrative expert) simultaneously. When the resulting 30 assessments were compared, the criterion "overall quality of the centre" (which was assessed on a 10-point scale) showed precise agreement in 47 %, and a deviation by 1 point in 33 % of the cases. Single features assessed on a three-point scale (no improvement needed/improvement recommended/immediate improvement obligatory) resulted in precise agreement in between 80 % ("medical and therapeutic processes") and 86 % ("structural features") of the cases. Two-point scales (condition fulfilled or not fulfilled) showed an agreement between 89 % ("internal quality management") and 97 % ("single structural features"). In order to maintain and further develop this good inter-rater-reliability, the visitors of Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund are continually trained in applying the visitation manual. In addition to transferring knowledge, these internal training courses are aimed at exchanging views and experience in order to enhance consensus among the visitors. This approach of Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund could be regarded as "internal quality assurance" of its visitation procedure.

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