The DigitalRadar is intended to measure the influence of the Hospital Financing Act, including billions in funding, on the degree of digitization of hospitals.
For the first time, the “DigitalRadar” consortium has surveyed the degree of digitization in German hospitals on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG). Among other things, the “DigitalRadar Hospital” is intended to measure the effect of the funding of hospitals with up to 4.3 billion euros through the Hospital Financing Act (KHZG). According to § 14b, this provides for the “evaluation of the degree of maturity of the hospitals with regard to digitization”. 1,624 hospitals, 91 percent of all planned hospitals, took part in the survey.
Mandatory participation
Hospitals that want to receive funding based on specific funding criteria must take part in the survey. Participating hospitals receive a certificate that serves as proof for the Federal Office for Social Security (BAS) that they meet the funding requirements. In addition, the hospitals have access to their results and “benchmarking information” as a dashboard.
The funded facts include the equipment of the emergency room, patient portals, digital care and treatment documentation, clinical decision support systems, digital medication management, IT security, online-based bed system, telemedicine networks. Most hospitals have applied for funding for “Digital Nursing and Treatment Documentation”, “Patient Portals” and “Digital Medication Management”. At the moment, however, these applications have not yet been processed by many hospitals.
As part of the survey of the degree of maturity of German hospitals with regard to digitization, 1616 hospitals or their IT staff, clinical staff and administration submitted a self-assessment. During the survey, around 3,000 support emails were written and 800 telephone calls were made to the participants. Between October and December 2021, around 91 percent evaluated their clinical processes, opportunities for information exchange and patient participation.
Comparison of public and private hospitals
The first results of the survey have now been presented: the public hospitals perform best in almost all dimensions. Overall, they show an advantage in terms of structures and systems, but the private hospitals are ahead in terms of patient participation and clinical processes. For more comparability of the digitization status, the key figures such as expenses for IT infrastructure, personnel costs or information on broadband connection were requested. According to the survey results, public hospitals perform best, followed by private hospitals and hospitals owned by churches, foundations or associations. Hospitals that had better broadband expansion, a high number of beds and status as a teaching hospital as well as several mobile PC workstations achieved a higher “DigitalRadar Score”.
33.7 percent of the hospitals surveyed are public, 37.4 percent belong to non-profit hospitals and 28.9 percent are privately owned. The average rating is 33 out of 100 possible points.
On average, the hospitals achieved the highest scores in “Structures and Systems”, the lowest in “Patient Participation” and “Telehealth”. The transfer of structured data and the interoperability between the software solutions can be expanded. 56 percent of the hospitals surveyed also had a data transmission rate of less than 500 Mbit/s. A large bandwidth is particularly important for telemedical examinations, since the examination would otherwise be made more difficult due to poor image quality.
The results should motivate the hospitals to “identify and prioritize individual needs for action and to derive further necessary measures. This can lead to a partially necessary equalization of the implementation schedules within the digitization projects,” says the operational manager of the project, Anne Wiesmann (Principal Lohfert & Lohfert AG). “An institution’s ability to positively influence the introduction of innovations will be limited by the size of the institution and the financial resources. […] In addition, with the now representative statements on the digitization of German hospitals, we have created a reliable database on which a future digital strategy can start and build,” says Sylvia Thun.
Possible impact on legislation
Further evaluations of the results, which could also influence the legislative proposals, will follow, also to examine the connection between digitization and the quality of care. During the presentation of the results, Sylvia Thun also called on the DigitalRadar to ask questions about the survey that had not yet been answered. In the future, the degree of digitization in the outpatient area could also be taken into account.
With the hospital future fund, Dr. Susanne Ozegowski, Head of the Department for Digitization and Innovation in the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), “The course [stellen]so that digitization can further improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare in the inpatient sector.”
