[Expanding outpatient rehabilitation]

Up to now, the majority of rehabilitative measures in Germany has been performed in inpatient programmes. In the past 10 years an extension of outpatient rehabilitation can be noted. Because of new social welfare legislation the legal disadvantages for participants in outpatient rehabilitation have been eliminated on the 1st July 2001. In the past year, the Federal Rehabilitation Council as well as various rehabilitation providers have developed further and specified their concepts in outpatient rehabilitation. Concept requirements include still the principles of holism, interdisciplinarity, goal-oriented rehabilitation and team-work of rehabilitation staff. The extension of outpatient rehabilitation in the sphere of German pension insurance scheme is documented by the increase in models respectively regular services and rehabilitative measures. The results of the evaluation suggest, that the outpatient realisation of a comprehensive rehabilitation concept yields comparable results as the inpatient realisation. In some regions there is a strong cooperation between pension insurance institutes and corresponding health insurance companies in order to extend outpatient rehabilitation. A quality assurance program for outpatient rehabilitation will be developed. It can be expected, that the extension of outpatient rehabilitation goes on and that thereby the possibilities of a more flexible medical rehabilitation grow.