Search

Background: Nudges offer a wide range of options for protecting health in everyday life that supplements traditional public health measures. Against this background, we conducted initial investigations on the effectiveness and ethical aspects of different nudges for promoting self-management of patients with diabetes mellitus type 2 in the context of Disease Management Programs (DMPs)., Methods: The ethical assessment of the nudges was done within the systematic framework of Marckmann et al. (2015) for public health ethics. The existing evidence on the effectiveness of nudges was summarised by means of a narrative literature review., Results: Target agreements with implementation plans, reminder, feedback reports, shared appointments of patients with physicians, peer mentoring, and behavior contracts are nudging interventions with moderate interference with personal rights and relatively unproblematic ethical requirements, which have demonstrated effectiveness in different contexts. Default enrollment for patient training courses, involvement of partners, confrontation with social norms, and shocking pictures may be effective as well; however, they interfere more deeply with the freedom and privacy of patients and, therefore, are bound to stronger ethical requirements and restrictions. The evidence base is still insufficient, especially for social support measures by relatives and peers., Conclusions: Nudging offers a wide range of targeted interventions for supporting self-management of patients with chronic diseases, the potential of which has not yet been fully realized. Particularly promising interventions should be tested in pilot studies for their acceptance, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in the context of DMPs., Competing Interests: Die Autorinnen/Autoren geben an, in keinem Interessenkonflikt zu stehen., (The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).)

Background: Digital health is a growing area in healthcare with a huge potential. Nevertheless, the degree of digitalization in German healthcare is low when compared internationally and with other German industries. Despite political efforts, certain barriers seem to strongly impede the process of digitalization process in healthcare., Method: We surveyed 18 representative healthcare experts from various sectors with semi-structured interviews on barriers and solutions for digital health. Thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke was used for interpretation., Results: The interviewees identified barriers that were stakeholder-specific and across stakeholders. Self-regulatory bodies and the medical profession were found to lack willingness and organizational structure for digitalization. Lack of evidence and missing interoperability represented primary obstacles, while current legislation and financial regulations were rarely mentioned. In particular, infrastructure expansion and interoperability would require a coordinated, state intervention. Positive communication on possibilities and benefits of digital solutions was also considered important., Conclusion: A strong political will, an overarching strategy accompanied by a communication concept seems to be necessary in order for digital health to succeed. Regarding legislation, binding specifications, deadlines and sanctions may be needed for self-regulatory bodies, while also involving users in the development process at an early stage and creating positive incentives for using digital solutions., Competing Interests: PND: Reisekostenerstattung vom Bundesverband Managed Care. JB: Anteile an HiDoc Technologies UG, FMG: keine, JS: keine, DA: keine., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Purpose:  Transparency of economic performance of integrated care systems (IV) is a basic requirement for the acceptance and further development of integrated care. Diverse evaluation methods are used but are seldom openly discussed because of the proprietary nature of the different business models. The aim of this article is to develop a generic model for measuring economic performance of IV interventions., Methods:  A catalogue of five quality criteria is used to discuss different evaluation methods -(uncontrolled before-after-studies, control group-based approaches, regression models). On this -basis a best practice model is proposed., Results:  A regression model based on the German morbidity-based risk structure equalisation scheme (MorbiRSA) has some benefits in comparison to the other methods mentioned. In particular it requires less resources to be implemented and offers advantages concerning the relia-bility and the transparency of the method (=important for acceptance). Also validity is sound. Although RCTs and - also to a lesser -extent - complex difference-in-difference matching approaches can lead to a higher validity of the results, their feasibility in real life settings is limited due to economic and practical reasons. That is why central criticisms of a MorbiRSA-based model were addressed, adaptions proposed and incorporated in a best practice model: Population-oriented morbidity adjusted margin improvement model (P-DBV(MRSA))., Conclusion:  The P-DBV(MRSA) approach may be used as a standardised best practice model for the economic evaluation of IV. Parallel to the proposed approach for measuring economic performance a balanced, quality-oriented performance measurement system should be introduced. This should prevent incentivising IV-players to undertake short-term cost cutting at the expense of quality., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Background: This paper analyses schemes to promote the authorisation of and reimbursement for orphan drugs., Methods: 8 countries - Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA - were studied to compare specific regulations for orphan drugs regarding drug admission, health technology assessment (HTA), decision-making for reimbursement, and off-label and compassionate use. Information was obtained by reviewing published and grey literature. Expert interviews were also conducted., Results: The comparison of orphan drug legislation reveals that the EU and the USA offer the greatest incentives for the development of orphan drugs, whereas there is a tendency for Australia and Switzerland to profit from incentives in other countries. Although not explicitly stated, economic evaluation of orphan drugs takes the special circumstances for orphan drugs into account. In addition to common reimbursement practices, special schemes or programmes for the reimbursement of high-priced orphan drugs exist in all countries that were analysed. Therefore access to orphan drugs seems to be warranted. However, due to co-payments of 5%, the USA may form an exception., Conclusion: On the one hand, the use of special criteria for drug admission, HTA, and reimbursement promotes R&D for orphan drugs. On the other hand, high opportunity costs arise, because huge efforts are made for a minority of patients. A solution for this moral dilemma may be the application of "rule of rescue" or of "no cure, no pay" programmes., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

The German reference pricing system defines a reimbursement threshold for groups of pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals are grouped according to certain criteria by the Federal Joint Committee. To make different active ingredients comparable, so called reference values are defined. Subsequently, the federal association of sickness funds sets reference prices using a regression procedure. However, the impact of the reference price system is limited. On the one hand there is a strong incentive for pharmaceutical companies to decrease prices to the reference price. On the other hand there is no incentive for further price reductions. Additionally, only one part of the pharmaceutical market is affected by reference pricing. Therefore the instrument has only managed to lower pharmaceutical expenditure in the short run. For sustainable long-term cost containment the use of other regulatory instruments is necessary. Nevertheless, compared to other instruments of price-regulation, reference pricing seems to be a good alternative to control pharmaceutical prices, since rationing is kept as little as possible.

Due to rising health care expenditures international comparisons of health care systems are recently gaining more importance. These benchmarks can provide interesting information for improving health care systems. Many of these comparisons implicitly assume that countries have a universal understanding of justice. But this assumption is rather questionable. With regard to the existing cultural differences in the understanding of justice the transferability of elements of health care systems is not always assured. A transfer usually requires a thorough examination of the judicial systems in each country. This article analyses the influence of different judicial systems applying to health care. In this context theories of justice by Rawls, Nozick and Confucius representing the possible understanding of justice in different cultures are described and analysed with regards to their influence on health care systems. The example of financing health care shows that the three theories of justice have very different consequences for designing health care systems especially concerning the role of governments.