[Review: Patient safety as a national health goal: current state and essential fields of action for the German healthcare system].

For some years patient safety has been an important topic for the design of the healthcare systems in many countries. In Germany we are still in the starting phase of this development. Here, patient safety is not a main focus for research and there is only little funding for these topics.

[How many hospital insurance claims are based on infection control failures?].

Background And Objective: It can be expected that hospital insurance claims based on health care-associated infections (HCAI) will increase in German hospitals because of growing media and patient interest in this topic. It was the aim of this study to determine the percentage of insurance claims because of HCAI among all potential cases of avoidable HCAI.

Methods: Data of a core group of 254 hospitals continuously working with one of the largest German hospital insurance companies (ECCLESIA) over an eleven-year period were used.

[Hospital risk management from the viewpoint of insurers].

The present article deals with the significance of risk management in hospitals from the viewpoint of liability insurers. From the perspective of insurance companies, the liability risk of a hospital and its personnel has considerably increased during the past 25 years. The present risk situation is characterized by a growing number of reported liability cases, as well as by an enormous increase of average compensation claims.