Health Minister Lauterbach’s hospital atlas is intended to make it easier to find a hospital. But the portal has been criticized a lot. Now there is another update.
The new government comparison portal for hospitals in Germany, the so-called Hospital Atlas, is intended to be more understandable and clearer. “We are giving the Hospital Atlas a comprehensive update and making it much easier for patients to understand,” said Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach to the “Rheinische Post”. Instead of showing 23,000 different procedures as before, the new version should “show how good each hospital is for the 20 most important procedures”. For this purpose, groups of illnesses should be grouped together.
According to the SPD politician, the hospital atlas should now work in detail like this: “On the homepage, patients are guided through larger tiles with general terms such as cancer, heart or bones and joints. Behind these, we then break down individual diseases and operations such as colon cancer, breast cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, bypass and stent operations or the use of artificial knee and hip joints.”
The hospital atlas is intended to provide information on the services and quality of treatment provided by the approximately 1,700 hospitals in Germany. For comparison purposes, the number of cases treated for each treatment per year is shown in a speedometer display. “In this way, the hospital atlas makes it clear to everyone why we so urgently need hospital reform. We should only leave complicated procedures to those who have sufficient experience,” said Lauterbach.
Update in a few days
The hospital atlas has been available online since mid-May, and the new version will be available in a few days, according to the minister. The portal has been criticized by the state health ministers, among others, because of the partially outdated data basis.
Lauterbach again rejected the criticism. “It is largely unjustified. The treatment data used, which are backed by 16 million insured people, are correct. If the data had been incorrect, I would have taken the atlas offline,” he said. Nevertheless, the debate showed that the atlas was too complex for laypeople.
Source: Stern
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