Welcome to the website of the Research Unit for Quantitative Health Services Research at the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine. The research unit has been headed by Prof. Dr. Verena Vogt since 1 June 2023.
Describing, analysing and improving healthcare services: these are our research goals. To this end, we use healthcare-related data (e.g., data from statutory health insurance funds) and combine it with data from qualitative and quantitative studies in order to incorporate the perspectives of all stakeholders in the healthcare system.
Our team focuses on the following areas of research
Healthcare is embedded in a regional context and is influenced by the socio-economical, cultural, historical and geographical characteristics of a region. We investigate how these regional factors affect the need for, demand for and provision of healthcare. In doing so, we focus on both nationwide and small-area analyses, particularly in Thuringia, a federal state in central Germany.
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Overuse of healthcare refers to healthcare services with no demonstrable medical benefit or services whose intensity exceeds medical need. These services can cause harm to health and strain the financial sustainability of the healthcare system. We investigate how often overuse occurs in the German healthcare system, where action is needed, and how overuse can be reduced. Our goal is to contribute to the efficient use of financial and human resources in the healthcare system.
Who receives which medical care, when, where and from whom? These questions are central when it comes to describing the state of healthcare systems. We aim to contribute to classifying, mapping and analysing the ‘patient journey’ as well as care processes and pathways. To this end, we use healthcare-related data and innovative methods such as sequence and network analyses.
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Healthcare interventions are often complex, as they comprise multiple interrelated components and operate at various levels of the healthcare system. We accompany complex interventions from needs assessment through feasibility and pilot studies to evaluation studies. Our work examines how these interventions can be sustainably translated into practice.