Zielsetzung von Klinikpfaden

In the German health care system, care providers face ever new challenges in regards to quality and cost of care, as well as to satisfaction and training of staff. Due to the intensiveness of the subject, these challenges are faced using Clinical Pathways. Clinical Pathways as we understand them in the University Medical Centre Mannheim are detailed care plans defining the desired measures to be performed for each treatment period. Those Clinical Pathways are thought to be a tool to improve care in surgery with regard to these issues. In National Health System (NHS) in the United Kingdom quality of care has the same importance as in continental Europe. Since the NHS is centralized system process quality measurements are driven centrally and do seem to directly influence the individual department or team. Furthermore process standardization across an entire department consisting of several medically independent consultants is extremely challenging. Out of those local needs a different understanding and necessity of clinical pathways developed. We will compare both models of pathways in the article.