Main description:

The German health care system is on a collision course with budget realities. Costs are high and rising, and quality problems are becoming ever more apparent. Decades of reforms have produced little change to these troubling trends.

Why has Germany failed to solve these cost and quality problems? The reason is that Germany has not set value for patients as the overarching goal, defined as the patient health outcomes achieved per euro expended.

This book lays out an action agenda to move Germany to a high value system: care must be reorganized around patients and their medical conditions, providers must compete around the outcomes they achieve, health plans must take an active role in improving subscriber health, and payment must shift to models that reward excellent providers. Also, private insurance must be integrated in the risk-pooling system.

These steps are practical and achievable, as numerous examples in the book demonstrate. Moving to a value-based health care system is the only way for Germany to continue to ensure access to excellent health care for everyone.

Contents:

Introduction.- Defining the Problem.- Guiding Principles of a Value-Based Health Care System.- The German Health Care System: Overview and Historical Development.- Health Insurance in Germany.- Health Care Providers.- Overall Assessment of German Health Care Providers.- The Role of Health Plans, Employers and Patients in Health Care Delivery.- Measuring the Results of Care.- Creating a High-Value German Health Care System: Overall Assessment and Recommendations.- Taxonomy of BQS Quality Indicators.