[Do legal regulations obstruct adequate quality assurance in the area of drug therapy?].

In Germany the quality of drug therapy suffers from the lack of transparency of an overloaded drug market, from the turnover-oriented information strategies of the pharmaceutical industry and from the lack of prescribing transparency and quality control of the individual doctor. After an analysis of the present deficient situation in the area of drug therapy the following paper discusses strategies to improve structure as well as process quality. It also stresses the necessity of implementing a legal framework to analyse individual patients' records aimed at controlling the quality of therapy. Because of problems with confidentiality continuous patient record linking is not allowed although it is a precondition for an adequate control of the patients progress and the quality of results.