[Citizen-centred health care in Germany: An analysis of expert interviews]

Citizens can represent a relevant key resource in health care, for example by actively practicing preventive health care and managing their own health care needs. In Germany, the role of citizens in the health care system has not yet been defined. Therefore, the aim of this study is, as a first step, to determine what is meant by "citizen-centred healthcare", since there is, as yet, no clear definition.

Between September and November 2022, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with representatives from the fields of politics and self-administration and service providers and, with their consent, recorded and transcribed. A category system was developed inductively and deductively based on Mayring's content analysis. Using this, two members of the project team coded the interviews independently of each other using the QCAmap software. After a replication check of the deviations, the content could then be analyzed.

A total of n = 10 interviews were conducted (n = 3 service providers, n = 2 self-administration, n = 5 politicians). The analysis revealed two different understandings of citizen-centred healthcare. Some of the experts understand citizen-centred healthcare as care that is provided close to home and easily accessible for citizens. The others interpret the term as care where citizens take on an active role. All interviewees saw the lack of health literacy among citizens as a key challenge. The social imbalance, which creates an inequality of opportunity in the involvement of citizens, was also mentioned several times. Opportunities were generally understood as the possibility of conserving resources and maintaining health. The analysis shows that there is still a lack of solutions that specifically address these challenges as well as the implementation of citizen-centred health care.

The expert interviews demonstrate that there are two fundamentally different understandings of citizen-centred healthcare and how it should be established in Germany. Future research should therefore pursue the goal of developing a definition of "citizen-centred health care" by expert consensus. This can then form the basis for concrete, future goals for action. There was consensus among the experts regarding the problems that need to be considered in this context. Factors such as citizens' lack of health literacy and social imbalance should therefore be given more attention in the future.