Data, facts and instruments on the German health system
What it’s all about
Medical associations and specialist societies comment on the topic of “digitisation” in strategy and concept papers as well as in press releases, but the matter has so far not been included at all or only to a limited extent in the continuing education activities for their members.
Three aspects matter
However, there would be a great opportunity to lead the members into the implementation in a subject-specific and individual way, if three aspects were taken into account: it would have to be
- It should be made clear that the telematics infrastructure (TI) with its satellite projects is not identical with digitisation, but is only a small component of the entire variety of possibilities,
- show how practice owners can develop individual digitisation strategies and implementation plans derived from them,
- make it clear that the introduction of digital solutions can only fulfil its objective and benefit practices and patients if it is based on a smoothly functioning practice management.
Practice management is the starting point
So far, however, the latter point has also been treated rather cautiously as an advanced training topic. Apart from digitalisation, this deficit is, among other things, a reason why outpatient medicine suffers from a pronounced practice management insufficiency. This fact is not only relevant because
- doctors and staff themselves suffer from it on a daily basis, but also because
- practice management acts as a transmitter between the competence and resources of operations and patient care.
In concrete terms, insufficiency means that GPs and specialists do not use almost half of the best practice standard of practice management. It describes the regulations, instruments and behaviours that are essential for effective and efficient work. In this respect, one of the training objectives would be to familiarise the participants of corresponding activities, whether on digitalisation or practice management, with the principle of practice management benchmarking, which is the simplest and quickest validated method to determine and eliminate the individual insufficiency status.
Further information
An insight into this approach is provided by the publication “Benchmarking practice management for GPs and specialists – method, application and benefits”, which is free of charge for GPs and specialists. It can be requested by e-mail to the address post@ifabs.de.
R2049 