[Ensuring quality in medical outpatient attention (author's transl)]

An overview is given of the reasons, the status and the possibilities for assessment of safeguarding the quality of medical attention. Organized safeguarding of quality is a differentiated and expensive instrument which requires a careful cost-benefit clarification. The practice of ensuring quality should be concentrated on those areas for which reliable principles of assessment are available and which, on the other hand, are of recognizably decisive significance for the benefit of the patients or the ability of the health services to pay. A cursory overview of provisions realized by the German Health Service in the outpatient sphere is given.