[The structurizing effect of minimum quantitative requirements for inpatient care].

Purpose: German social law ( section sign 137 SGB V) authorized the partners in health care to establish and develop a catalogue of procedures for which quality is associated with volume. There is lack of evidence regarding the volume limits. Other aspects need to be taken into account, first of all by consultation of performance data analysis.

Use of nonprohibited hallucinogenic plants: increasing relevance for public health? A case report and literature review on the consumption of Salvia divinorum (Diviner's Sage).

Introduction: : We want to call attention to a mint plant, called diviner's sage ( Salvia divinorum), originally used in shamanic ceremonies of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico. On numerous websites of the internet, this ancient herbal drug and its extracts are offered as a legal means of widening individual awareness. Regarding its dose-response relationship, the active ingredient, salvinorin A, is one of the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogens.

["Off-label" prescribing of drugs in the ambulatory care of children and adolescents].

Background And Objective: Hospitalised children receive up to 90 % of their drug prescriptions without ("unlicensed use") or outside ("off-label use") the terms of their product license. As no data are available for pediatric outpatients in Germany, we determined "off-label" use in a representative cohort of children and adolescents.

Patients And Methods: We analyzed 1.

[Quality of Statutory Inpatient Database Before Introducing DRGs].

According to the legislation of the Federal Republic of Germany (Gesundheitsstrukturgesetz 1993) defined performance figures must be listed for each case of inpatient care. As hospital morbidity data are essential for further development of the health care system and for introducing the DRGs, the corresponding statistical data of a German federal territory of the year 2000 were studied in respect of several aspects of their quality: conformity with the requirements of law, plausibility and ability to transport essential medical information. Notable variations were found between the departments and different medical disciplines without interdependence to variant hospital status.