Health Care Management

RAC - Exploring health system responsiveness in ambulatory care and disease management

This project will comprehensively explore non-clinical aspects of health care delivery in Germany and its relationship with other dimensions of health system performance for two important fields of health policy: outpatient and chronic disease care. As a starting point we will use the World Health Organization’s (WHO) concept of health system responsiveness, which is defined as a measure of how well the delivery of health care responds to the patients’ legitimate expectations of non-health aspects. It encompasses eight domains: dignity, prompt attention, autonomy, choice, communication, confidentiality, quality of basic amenities, and access to social support. The project will consist of three parts.

We will (A) adapt the WHO responsiveness measurement instrument in order to appropriately evaluate non-clinical aspects of health care delivery of outpatient and chronic disease care.

We will use the established instruments to (B) analyze the determinants of non-clinical quality of care in ambulatory settings and chronic disease care.

Finally, we will (C) investigate the relationship between responsiveness and other dimensions of health system performance.