Health services research: Definition, objective, method and perspectives

Abstract

This overview article highlights the central role of health services research (HSR) for the further development of the healthcare system. As a young scientific discipline in Germany, HSR covers five important elements with different weighting in different definitions, which are elaborated in some detail in this article: patient orientation, results and outcome orientation at the patient and population levels, implementation perspectives and context relation, complex interventions and improvement, multidisciplinarity and multiprofessionalism. One of the fundamental pillars of HRS is related to the insufficient implementation of scientifically proven treatment methods and improvement strategies into routine patient care. Healthcare research is therefore the so-called second translation of clinical trials in the routine daily care (from bedside to practice) after the first translation from bench to bedside. The scientific methods used in HSR clearly extend beyond the spectrum of (clinical) epidemiology. The methodological standards are developed as consensus memoranda of members of the German network of HSR, which serve as orientation points for qualitatively good HSR. Finally, various perspectives for the long-term safeguarding and improvement of the quality of HSR in Germany are proposed.