[Selection, problems and perspective of quality indicators]

The advances in information technology offer new possibilities to gather and analyse health-related information in order to get an inside view into the quality of medical care. Applied medical interventions and the related outcome for the patient can be evaluated if information of a certain degree of complexity is available. Performance measures are based on collection and aggregation of data. They try to abstract medical performances in order to get objective and comparable variables. These variables are useful in evaluating and monitoring the different dimensions of patient care. Performance measurement can inform people about the outcomes they can expect from certain treatments. Beside formal criteria such as validity and reliability, the specific objectives determine the selection of a relevant performance measure. This article describes actual problems and solutions in the data collection and the analysis of performance measures for the domain of oncology. This way, we want to encourage the meaningful, but critical use of performance measures in medicine. The provision of such information can build the basis for the process of medical decision making by physicians, the selection of a suitable medical institution by patients, and the allocation of resources by providers.