Hospital.Help

Berlin The criticism of the recently launched Federal Hospital Atlas continues. The ad hoc commission on care structures of the Association of Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF) does not currently consider the atlas to be trustworthy.

In a recent statement, the Commission calls on the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) to designate the website as a beta version, i.e. as a test version.

The reason is the incompleteness and preliminary nature of the data shown, according to the paper. This was signed by the deputy head of the AWMF, Monika Nothacker, and Manfred Gogol, chairman of the ad hoc commission on care structures.

The Commission warns against the atlas because it could lead to patients being misled due to the preliminary data and a lack of quality control of the data. Hospitals could also be damaged.

Craftsmanship errors

There are, for example, technical errors in the lack of separation between main and secondary diagnoses and the poor linking of diagnoses and procedures. The coding of department keys also varies greatly from region to region and between federal states and can therefore hardly be interpreted across the board, according to the commission.

The reasons for the current documentation practice in hospitals should be discussed with the BMG and solutions for a change should be agreed, suggests the AWMF commission.

The criticism of the Federal Hospital Atlas had already become known last week. Many doctors had also complained about incorrect data and the presentation that was not understandable to laypeople. The BMG then promised an update. For example, a data set would be replaced and the search function optimized, the BMG explained last Friday.

However, the Commission is now criticising the fact that information about changes or updates that have been made cannot be found and that a version history is missing. The information about planned updates is not sufficient and information about the completeness of the page is too vague, the statement continues.

The initial assessment of the professional societies involved was therefore that the atlas should be shut down again until it contains more reliable information. The AWMF ad hoc commission, however, recommends initially designating the atlas as a test version and offers the BMG an exchange of information on the atlas.

Criticism also came today from Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of Health and Justice, Kerstin von der Decken (CDU). The chairwoman of the Conference of Health Ministers (GMK) stressed that the Federal Minister of Health had promised to save lives with the Federal Hospital Atlas and to provide guidance on quality.

But if patients are misled in an emergency due to incorrect information in the Federal Hospital Atlas, there is a risk that the opposite will happen, she explained. People’s health must not be put at risk due to incorrect government information.

The state’s information activities are subject to the requirement of accuracy. The statement that the atlas is a learning system and that the clinics can report errors themselves is irresponsible. Users rely on what they see.

If the federal government cannot correct the errors immediately, it must take the atlas offline until it has corrected them. Transparency is good, but the Federal Hospital Atlas has not yet provided that, says von der Decken. © cmk/aerzteblatt.de