Digitalization of healthcare and its effects on quality of care

Abstract

Ensuring the quality of healthcare services is a core concern of the statutory health insurance system. It is therefore not surprising that recent initiatives to (further) digitalize the healthcare system, specifically to introduce the electronic patient record and other applications in the telematics infrastructure, with the Patient Data Protection Act (“Patientendaten-Schutz-Gesetz”, PDSG) of digital health applications with the Digital Care Act (“Digitale-Versorgung-Gesetz”, DVG), or to strengthen hospital IT with the Hospital Future Act (“Krankenhauszukunftsgesetz”, KHZG), are justified by ensuring or even increasing the quality-of-service provision. This article sheds light on the question of how the use of various digital solutions relates to the classic goals of quality assurance in healthcare, in particular, whether digital solutions are suitable for promoting quality assurance. It is shown that digital solutions are fundamentally suitable for ensuring quality. This is due to two characteristics of digital solutions: the possibility of comprehensive data collection and the possibility of making data available independent of time and place. However, it is also apparent that the benefits associated with digital solutions are highly dependent on the specific use cases.