Research

Not only more effective drugs, medical technology or new surgical procedures help the society to stay healthy. Knowledge and understanding of how and where people are treated, defining areas of special need and using limited resources in the most effective way can also help to improve the health system. The special research interests of the Department of Health Services Research are regional health services research, the development of quality measures for management of health care, and economical evaluation of health and health technologies in the context of a cost-effective distribution of resources.

Regional health services research: Projects in this area aim to analyze regional variation and regional inequalities in health and health care.

Quality management: The main focus in this research field is the analysis of hospital admissions that could have been prevented through preventive health care services or early interventions in the ambulatory sector (“ambulatory care sensitive hospitalizations”). Both access to and quality of the ambulatory sector can be measured via ambulatory care sensitive hospitalizations.

Economic Analysis of health and health technology: Projects in this area include the economic evaluation of innovative health technologies and public health interventions as well as the analysis of trends in inequalities in health and health care.

Read more about a selection of our current research projects here or on our German page.