Evaluation of the German Health Care System in International Comparison

During the ten-week survey period, interviewers from the BQS Institute were able to conduct a telephone interview with over 900 randomly selected people over the age of 55 about their experiences with the German healthcare system and their level of satisfaction.

This survey was conducted simultaneously in ten other industrialized nations. The study thus provides those with political responsibility in the participating nations with important information on the quality of healthcare from the perspective of the 55+ population in an international comparison.

The results will be presented at a symposium in Washington (USA) in fall 2014 and published in the journal Health Affairs. Further publications are planned; as soon as we have them, we will refer to them here.

This project was realized in cooperation with Prof. Dr. med. Stephanie Stock from the Institute of Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Cologne.

The Commonwealth Fund, which coordinates the project internationally, is a non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting continuous improvement in patient care. The costs for the survey in Germany are borne by the German Federal Ministry of Health (BMG). The GESIS Institute has kindly supported us again with telephone numbers.

At this point, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all respondents who were available for the interviews!