[The Potentials of Patient Surveys for Quality Assurance in Medical Care]

What constitutes "quality" in medical care and the means by which it is controlled, secured, or (re-)established has largely been assigned to the joint self-administration of service providers and health insurers in Germany. The current implementation uses an understanding of quality that does not sufficiently take into account important patient-centered quality dimensions. One of the reasons for this might be that patient surveys are not yet recognized as an equivalent data source for quality assessment in the German healthcare context and are not yet established nationwide. Where patient survey instruments are used, they are often reduced to the survey of so-called patient satisfaction. In the future, survey instruments must be viewed and used in a much more differentiated manner.Indication-specific patient surveys on treatment results (patient-reported outcome measures; PROMs) can provide information on the success of treatment in certain diseases. With the targeted collection of patient experiences (patient-reported experience measures; PREMs), the process quality can also be determined. The routine use of corresponding patient surveys is provided according to §§ 136 ff. and § 299 Social Security Code Book V (SGB V) for the purposes of legally binding external quality assurance. Their use is intended to support the alignment of the health system towards value and benefit for patients. To this extent, there is an urgent need for implementation and considerable further development.