The emphasis of the research is on hospitals and institutions, particularly the impact of health care reforms on staff and patient outcomes. There is an increasing need for information on outcomes with the introduction of a case-fee payment system based on DRGs (diagnosis-related groups) in German hospitals and rising quality comparisons between hospitals (eg. ranking lists and league tables). We work closely with Berlin hospitals through the study of the following issues:

• the effects of health care reforms on the organizational structures of hospitals,
• the causes and effects of hospital privatization,
• the study of the measurement of patient outcomes and of positive and negative-acting factors
• the user-orientated approach in the sense of developing benchmarking profiles, particularly regarding their use in quality improvement

The second main field of activity are the so-called disease management programs. We analyze the German situation and incorporate international evidence to assess the effectiveness of these programs.