[The new hospital reimbursement system: a chance and a challenge to child and adolescent psychiatry or «much ado about nothing»?].

New legislation in the financing of psychiatric hospitals in Germany stipulates the introduction of a new reimbursement system for psychiatric child and adolescent psychiatric and psychosomatic hospitals in Germany by 2013. In several steps norms are to be empirically defined and services to be documented, and the current per diem system of hospital charges has to be replaced by a more specific system reflecting differences in the level of distinct patient groups. This discussion paper gives an overview of the legal framework as well as the risks and chances of the new system. An increased effort in documentation will be one of the clear consequences of the new system («much ado» ...). Psychiatric inpatient treatment will be much more transparent in detail, though it is not yet clear whether there will be a real improvement for patients (... «about nothing»). The new system also offers the chance to introduce modern treatment concepts like home treatment. Such chances for innovation should be implemented to the benefit of patients.