[Evaluating the health target "Increasing health competence, strengthening patient sovereignty"]

Establishing citizen and patient orientation is a national objective of German health policy. The cooperation network gesundheitsziele.de has defined the target area "Increasing health competence, strengthening patient sovereignty", and its Working Group 8, which bears the same name, has identified four key areas for action: increasing transparency, developing competence, strengthening patients' rights, and improving complaint management. As in the case of all the other targets defined by gesundheitsziele.de, attention is drawn to the need to evaluate the effects and success of the targets and related measures. A group of experts was given the task of developing an evaluation strategy, defining success indicators, and examining the availability of data sources for evaluation. With regard to the health target "Increasing health competence, strengthening patient sovereignty", the evaluation is focusing on what effect the corresponding targets and measures are having on users and how they are perceived (summative evaluation), i.e., primarily on measuring outcomes at the population level. An examination of available studies and surveys shows that to date little is known about the expectations and assessments of health-service users. At the same time, the analysis makes it clear that priority should be given to using continuous data in order to arrive at a continuous and systematic evaluation of the "Increasing health competence, strengthening patient sovereignty" health target and the implementation of citizen and patient orientation in healthcare in general. It would also be useful to include all hitherto underrepresented indicator questions in these surveys and to also examine the implementation of the health target among vulnerable population groups, e.g., elderly people in nursing homes.