[Disease-specific patterns of hospital care in Germany analyzed via the German Inpatient Quality Indicators (G-IQI)]

Using the categories of the German Inpatient Quality indicators (G-IQI) important characteristics of inpatient care were analyzed on the national level in Germany. The evaluation gives an overview of total national case numbers and number of hospitals involved in the treatment of important diseases.

The analysis was based on the national so called 'DRG database' for the year 2010, which covers all German inpatient DRG cases (all patient / all payer database). With the major exception of psychiatric and psychosomatic cases this database covers 17.43 of the 18.49 million German inpatient cases. The coded diagnoses and procedures as well as demographic information were used to group cases into G-IQI disease categories. The respective total case numbers, number of hospitals providing the services, interquartile range of case distribution, in-hospital mortality and interquartile range of standardized mortality ratios were investigated.

Especially for less frequent diseases and procedures it is shown, that many hospitals treat very low case numbers. For example for gastric resection the lower quartile is 4, for esophageal resection 1 and for cystectomy 5. Even for a more frequent disease like myocardial infarction the lower quartile is 36. Mortalities also show considerable variation. However, due to the low case numbers in many hospitals, the deviation of hospital mortality from the German average can only become significant for rather few hospitals.

On the one hand this paper provides national reference values for the German Inpatient Quality Indicators, which cover 38.7 % of all inpatient cases and 50.8 % of in-hospital deaths. On the other hand it gives a first overview of the disease specific patterns of inpatient hospital care in Germany. Despite the high overall quality of the German health care system it suggests, that further improvement might be possible, if structural problems were addressed.