Die Rehabilitation
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Rehabilitation centers in Germany with a care supply contract according to section 111 Social Code Book Five - statutory health insurance (SGB V) are legally obligated to implement an internal quality management and to participate in comprehensive measures of external quality assurance which particularly aim at improving outcome quality ( section 135a SGB V). The legislator has left it to the central associations of health insurance funds and to the relevant umbrella organisations of care providers to develop these measures as well as the basic requirements on internal quality management in order to reach a joint agreement about it (cf. section 137d [1] and [1a] SGB V). The corresponding agreement was concluded on April 1, 2004. ⋯ Irrespective of their origin quality relevant results should be integrated into a benchmarking system providing information to the operational and medical management of a rehabilitation center on the effectiveness and efficiency of the medical rehabilitation services provided. Up-to-date data, such as those generated by the Eva-Reha database, or sample survey data as those from the QS-Reha procedure can equally be used for such a benchmarking system and complement each another in a meaningful way. In this paper the main features of the QS-Reha procedure and the Eva-Reha database are described, with the objective of pointing out the particular perspectives of their data structure and results for continuous improvement in the framework of internal quality management.