RESUMO
The traditional separation of health care into sectors in Germany causes communication problems that hinder continuous, patient-oriented care. This is most evident in the transition from inpatient to outpatient care. That said, there are also breaks in the flow of information, a lack of supply, or even incorrect information flowing within same-sector care. The transition from a division of functions into sectors to a patient-oriented process represents a change in the paradigm of health care that can only be successfully completed with considerable effort. Germany's statutory health insurance (SHI) funds play a key role here, as they are the contracting parties as well as the financiers of integrated care, and are strategically located at the center of the development process.The objective of this article is to explore how Germany's SHI funds view integrated care, what they regard as being the drivers of and barriers to transitioning to such a system, and what recommendations they can provide with regard to the further development of integrated care. For this purpose semi-structured interviews with board members and those responsible for implementing integrated care into the operations of ten SHI funds representing more than half of Germany's SHI-insured population were conducted. According to the interviewees, a better framework for integrated care urgently needs to be developed and rendered more receptive to innovation.Only in this way will the widespread stagnation of the past several years be overcome. The deregulation of § 140a-d SGB V and the establishment of a uniform basis for new forms of care in terms of a new innovation clause are among the central recommendations of this article. The German federal government's innovation fund was met with great hope, but also implied risks. Nonetheless, the new law designed to strengthen health care overall generated high expectations.
