[Quality assurance measures in surgical gynecology. Program development and routine introduction in Hessia]

Frequently, quality assurance measures fail during application in routine practice despite showing very promising results in the developmental stage. Using the project 'Quality assurance in gynecological surgery' as an example which has made the leap into routine practice, we describe the development of a successful quality assurance measure. We name some of the elements which have proved to be crucial for the assumption of a new quality assurance measure. First of all, decisive was the development of the measure by renowned experts of the scientific medical society together with methodologists. All current professional and legal demands on medical quality assurance were included as were methodological knowledge for the optimal formation of such a measure. The evaluation of the measure on approximately 50,000 gynecological surgical procedures showed that the new quality assurance measure is suitable in gynecological surgery as an instrument both for making transparent the quality of health care delivery as well as for supporting comprehensive internal and external assessments of performance, outcomes, and processes of care and comparisons with the "best" care provider ("benchmarking"). Secondly, a favorable point in time--here the introduction of a diagnosis related payment system--and the early and close cooperation on the part of the program developers with political decision-makers helped to ensure that the newly developed quality assurance measure in gynecological surgery was accepted for routine practice.