[Legal questions regarding medical centers : Positions and perspectives]

Medical centers were introduced into the system of statutory health insurance as contractual service providers by the Statutory Health Insurance Modernization Act of 2003. Since 2004 in addition to accredited physicians, authorized physicians, and authorized medical facilities, approved medical centers can also participate in offering contractual care. The introduction of medical centers was intended to permit a new form of patient management that was considered to have the advantage of facilitating close cooperation between the different medical specialties as well as non-medical health care providers.