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Educational Products

The Picker Institute Europe produces a world class newsletter that provides some of the best sources of information and “best practices” for improving healthcare practices and systems. Below is a direct link to the Picker Europe factsheets for 2003 - 2005.

"Through the Patient's Eyes"

"The Doctors' Tale"

"The Autonomous Patient - Ending Paternalism in Medical Care"

In this monograph Professor Angela Coulter examines the changing nature of the clinician-patient relationship and recommends some tools to enable patient autonomy to develop in an appropriate way. Set in the wider context of health and social trends, it is a fascinating study of the changing nature of medicine at the beginning of the 21st century.

This report examines the case for change in the way health professionals interact with patients in the UK. Public attitudes towards the NHS are influenced by knowledge of practice in other countries, and by information obtained from the printed and audiovisual media, by commercial pressures, and by the views of health professionals. Patients can be regarded as participants in decision-making, as care managers, as evaluators, and as active citizens.

"The European Patient of the Future"

Good Medical Practice (May 2001)

The core guidance document for doctors. Includes: ensuring patients receive good clinical care; maintaining professional relationships with patients, their careers, and colleagues; acting on concerns about patient safety. The guidance is used in setting the medical education syllabus and taught on undergraduate courses. It is also used as a basis for doctors’ appraisals in the NHS and independent sector. All other guidance flows from and supports the principles in Good Medical Practice.

Patient-Centered Care: A Transparency Initiative Hospital Guide for the Rhur District of Germany

The Hospital Guide Ruhrgebiet
by Wolfram Guenther

View the abstract on the book here >

View the Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet website here >

"More and more patients are taking their health into their own hands - and are looking for hospitals in which they feel comfortable and know they will be treated well. The Hospital Guide, which the Initiativkreis Rhur District has drawn up, offers an enormous support.

Three perspectives:

the view of the patient

the view of the established physicians

the performance data of the hospitals themselves

make possible a comprehensive view of the strengths of the hospitals and can facilitate the selection."

Prof. Dr Ekkehard D. Schulz,Chairman of the executive committee of the ThyssenKrupp AG Moderator of the Initiativkreis Ruhr district since 2004

Have you ever looked for the "right" hospital yourself? Perhaps you have asked friends or relatives for recommendations or have gathered information via your own experience. What hospital is the best for me? Up to now there has been no simple answer to this question. Information about the performance and quality of hospitals has been difficult to find and also partly biased. What has been missing is an objective advisor to help you select quickly and realistically, on the basis of methodical comprehensible criteria, the hospital best suited for you and your individual situation.

Predicated on the belief that the German health system is in need of a complex reform and that more transparency in the health system is the basis for an improved and affordable health service in Germany, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), in cooperation with the Chair for Medicine-Management at the University of Duisburg-Essen, The Picker Institute Deutchland gGmbH, 37 hospitals (with 58 departments) and 17 leading physicians clinics in the Rhur region of Germany, participated in the "Transparency Initiative". The Goal of this Initiative, as well as of the study, is the provision of more transparency in health and hospital care. Transparency creates incentives for improvement as well as a change of structures (for example, more responsibility of the patients). By referring to the objective information provided in the Hospital Guide ("Der Klinik-Fuhrer Ruhrgebiet"), patients are able to compare the various results of hospitals, identify in which hospital they would prefer to receive their health care services, and then independently select the hospital that meets their criteria.

Performance capability of the medical care in the Ruhr district was systematically measured from various viewpoints. A concept was developed to provide more transparency, regarding the services and quality of the health system, in the Ruhr area in Germany. The resulting, "Intitativkreis Ruhrgebiet" was created to close this gap with a publicly available hospital guide.

This Hospital Guide ("Der Klinik-Fuhrer Ruhrgebiet") is unique in that it evaluates hospitals and their performance on the basis of comprehensive quantitative scrutiny. The study distinguishes itself by the fact that it examined the quality of the hospitals from three different perspectives. For each of these three perspectives we are supported by a unique study with comprehensive evaluation criteria:

Detailed analysis of hospital data and performance statistics

Standardized patient surveys, carried out by Picker Institute Germany, asking the opinion of 12,000 patients

Standardized physician surveys, carried out by Picker Institute Germany, asking the opinions of 3,500 medical practitioners

Perspective performance experience and quality indicators

Participating hospitals in the top fields

The Hospital Guide ("Der Klinik-Fuhrer Ruhrgebiet") contains the results of standardized patient and practitioner surveys and the number of cases for certain diagnoses (DRG #s) for the participating hospitals. The names of the hospitals were published in the Hospital Guide, making comparisons available for the patients. For the first time patients can directly compare the quality of hospitals, thus setting a signal for future transparency in the German health system.

The Hospital Guide ("Der Klinik-Fuhrer Ruhrgebiet"), which is free, has raised intense public interest, being the first published comparison of hospitals in Germany.

The first printing, 30,000 copies, was sold out within weeks.

The online version was downloaded 150,000 times.

The web page of the Transparency Initiative has received 1.5 million hits.

Due to the success of this Initiative, a second clinic guide will be published.

Patient Safety: A Handbook for Dealing with Risks in Health Care

By Marc-Anton Hochreutener, Elke Holzer, Christian Thomeczek, Eugen Hauke, Dieter Conen

Published By Facultas Verlags- und Buchhandels AG, Vienna, 2005

ISBN 3-85076-687-X

Like in the United States, patient safety has become a major issue in the European health care system. The risks, the spiraling costs, and the insufficient or absence of clinical risk management has led to dealing with the question:

" How can better planning reduce the errors and risks?"

In this book, Marc-Anton Hochreutener et al talks to experts and practitioners from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany about how these risks may be detected, which strategies currently exist to handle such errors, and how traditional risk management may be adapted for health care. The descriptions of specific approaches and solutions from these three countries offer new strategies for both development and modification of current practices.

For information on how to order this book >

The Picker Institute Europe provides access to a significant body of research and publications for practitioners and administrators who are interested in improving health care through an understanding of the multiple dimensions of the patient-centered care approach.

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