• Henning Zeidler and István Meznerits.
• Arbeitsgemeinschaft Regionaler Kooperativer Rheumazentren in der DGRh. AG-Rheumazentren@mh-hannover.de
• Z Arztl Fortbild Qualitatssich. 2003 Jan 1;97(6):391-8.

AbstractThe organisation of regional co-operative centres for rheumatic diseases was supported by a grant from the German Ministry of Health from 1992 to 1998, which aimed to improve the management of patients with chronic rheumatic diseases. After establishing the centres formal structures the major task was to improve quality of care by co-ordination and co-operation of all the institutions and health care providers involved in the management of rheumatic patients. For all these activities to be continued the regional co-operative centres for rheumatic diseases were integrated in the German Society of Rheumatology as one of its working groups in 1996. The major objective is the quality management of rheumatic care including a uniform patient documentation (the so-called core documentation), a thesaurus of diagnoses and the nation-wide use of a patient passport. Most importantly, guidelines for diagnosis and therapy were developed and especially adapted for use by patients and primary care physicians. Five project working groups (guidelines for diagnosis and therapy, documentation, quality management, paediatric rheumatology, physical medicine and rehabilitation) were established to work on future initiatives. Quality management is further supported and intensified by annual scientific workshops. In addition, the regional co-operative centres for rheumatic diseases are engaged in research and an important partner of the German Competence Network Rheumatic Diseases. Based on the established structures the horizontal and vertical network should be further involved in general medical care and should intensify the interaction with clinical and basic research.

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