Digitization in the German Health Care System - An Analysis of the Status Quo Using the Example of the Dental Sector

Abstract

According to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, the German healthcare industry is growing faster than the economy as a whole but is regularly far behind compared to the rate of digitalization. Nonetheless, the healthcare industry offers great potential for digital applications. The brief overview at hand uses the example of treatment and cost plans in the dental field to illustrate the state of digitalization in the German health care system. The primary goal is to examine whether it is possible to transfer the principle of electronic data medium exchange for hospital settlements and the associated electronic data processing to the transmission of treatment and cost plans in the dental field. Anselstetter's (1984) expertise is fundamentally used to evaluate the benefits of electronic data processing and to a treatment and cost plan under critical evaluation. In order to determine relevant benefit effects for health insurance funds and dentists, a transfer and processing form of the treatment and cost plan is used based on a generated model. Applying this model can assist health insurance funds to identify effects regarding time, personnel reduction, and more efficient use of existing personnel structures. It also provides health insurance companies and dentists with an overview of the possible benefits of electronic data transmission and processing. Nonetheless, one of the problems is that it is not possible to calculate the expected costs due to the lack of empirical examinations. Consequently, a detailed cost- benefit evaluation of an electronic transmission and processing of the treatment and cost plans is unfeasible.