Quality Management in Health Care – Example of a German Hospital for Dermatology and Allergology

Abstract

German health care has changed dramatically within the last decade and still continues to do so. Terms such as economic efficiency, customer orientation, and competition gain in importance. Quality management constitutes an appropriate response to this challenge. It is a way to organize work flows in hospitals or outpatient departments as useful as possible and to achieve an optimum of outcome quality, i.e., clinical outcome, patient satisfaction and economic aspects, with the staff available. These results can be presented in a transparent way to-wards third parties such as health insurance companies or the legislative body. At the moment, the certification according to DIN EN ISO 9001 combined with the model of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is regarded as a suitable approach for implementation and demonstration of total quality management.