Abstract
The German and Australian healthcare system share extensive similarities in their financial and administrative structures. Both countries follow a two-tiered system offering both public and private insurance. As Germany adapted the Australian DRG system in 2003 to bill patients according to diagnosis-related case rates, patient treatment and accounting also follow similar practices. Despite their common preconditions in the “offline” setting, the goals and execution of their nationally initiated e-health solutions show vast differences. While Australia’s platform-based Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) offers an opt-in solution for patients and doctors to share healthcare data directly under the control of the patient, Germany’s electronic health card (EHC) mandatorily includes personal and insurance data that can be further expanded with medical data and electronic health records. Information on the EHC is mainly managed by healthcare providers. The differing approaches are linked to different opportunities and weaknesses. This chapter provides a systematic overview of the Australian and German e-health system and gives suggestions on strategies and challenges from both countries. By conducting a SWOT analysis, both e-health systems are critically reflected considering supported processes, applied technologies, and user acceptance. We furthermore discuss the impact of the individual systems on current healthcare issues and the success rate of their initial intentions.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
AIHW. (2016). Australian refined diagnosis-related groups (AR-DRG) data cubes: AR-DRG cubes for 1997–98 to 2013–14. Retrieved February 03, 2016, from http://www.aihw.gov.au/hospitals-data/ar-drg-data-cubes/
Australian Department of Health. (2013). Review of the personally controlled electronic health record. from http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/17BF043A41D470A9CA257E13000C9322/$File/FINAL-Review-of-PCEHR-December-2013.pdf
Australian Department of Health. (2015). My health record statistics. from https://myhealthrecord.gov.au/internet/ehealth/publishing.nsf/Content/pcehr-statistics
Australian Government, Federal Register of Legislation. (2012). Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Act 2012.
Australian Health Ministers’ Council. (2008). National E-Health Strategy.
Boonstra, A., & Broekhuis, M. (2010). Barriers to the acceptance of electronic medical records by physicians from systematic review to taxonomy and interventions. BMC Health Services Research, 10, 231.
Bunker, D. (2011). E-health and NEHTA: Integrating heterogeneous data sources: A technology or policy challenge.
Castillo, V. H., Martínez-García, A. I., & Pulido, J. R. G. (2010). A knowledge-based taxonomy of critical factors for adopting electronic health record systems by physicians: A systematic literature review. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 10, 60.
Davis, K., Stremikis, K., Squires, D., & Schoen, C. (2014). Mirror, mirror on the wall: How the performance of the U.S. health care system compares internationally. New York: The Commonwealth Fund.
Deutscher Bundestag. (2015). Gesetz für sichere digitale Kommunikation und Anwendungen im Gesundheitswesen sowie zur Änderung weiterer Gesetze.
Dietzel, G. (2001). E-Health und Gesundheitstelematik: Herausforderungen und Chancen. Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 98(4), 158–160.
Eng, T. R. (2001). The eHealth landscape: A terrain map of emerging information and communication technologies in health and heath care. Princeton, NJ: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
European Commission. (2015). Digital agenda for Europe: A Europe 2020 initiative, from https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals
Eysenbach, G. (2001). What is e-health? Journal of Medical Internet Research, 3(2), E20.
Fetter, R. B., Shin, Y., Freeman, J. L., Averill, R. F., & Thompson, J. D. (1980). Case mix definition by diagnosis-related groups. Medical Care, 18(2), i-53.
Florida, R., Mellander, C., Stolarick, K., Silk, K., Matheson, Z., & Hopgood, M. (2011). Creativity and prosperity: The global creativity index, from http://martinprosperity.org/media/GCI%20Report%20Sep%202011.pdf
gematik. (2016). gematik Unternehmensorganisation. Retrieved February 06, 2016, from https://www.gematik.de/cms/de/gematik/unternehmensorganisation/historie_1/historie_1.jsp
GKV Spitzenverband. (2015a). Elektronische Gesundheitskarte (eGK), from https://www.gkv-spitzenverband.de/krankenversicherung/telematik_und_datenaustausch/egk/egk.jsp
GKV Spitzenverband. (2015b). Das Wichtigste über Das Wichtigste über die elektronische Gesundheitskarte.
Haeussler, B., Zich, K., & Bless, H.-H. (2014). Does the implementation of a new payment system for hospital services induce changes in the quality of health care? Experiences from Germany. BMC Health Services Research, 14(Suppl 2), O18.
Hage, E., Roo, J. P., van Offenbeek, M. A., & Boonstra, A. (2013). Implementation factors and their effect on e-health service adoption in rural communities: A systematic literature review. BMC Health Services Research, 13, 19.
InEK GmbH. (2016). G-DRG-System 2016, from http://www.g-drg.de/cms/
Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2010). Principles of marketing (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Krüger-Brand, H. (2011), TeleHealth 2011 – digitale Medizin: Telemedizin und Gesundheits-Apps, Deutsches Ärzteblatt International
Little, A. D. (2016). Global digital health market from 2013 to 2020, by segment (in billion U.S. dollars), from http://www.statista.com/statistics/387867/value-of-worldwide-digital-health-market-forecast-by-segment/
Lüngen, M., & Lauterbach, K. (2002). Ergebnisorientierte Vergütung bei DRG. In Qualitätssicherung bei pauschalierender Vergütung stationärer Krankenhausleistungen. Gesundheitsmanagement. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Neumann, K. (2014). Blick für das Ganze, from http://www.iges.com/kunden/gesundheit/forschungsergebnisse/2014/gesundheitswirtsch aft/index_ger.html#ZMS_HIGHLIGHT=raw&raw=drg
OECD. (2015). OECD Health Statistics 2015, from http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm
WHO. (2016). eHealth: Glossary of globalization, trade and health terms, from http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story021/en/
Wickramasinghe, N. S., Fadlalla, A. M. A., Geisler, E., & Schaffer, J. L. (2005). A framework for assessing e-health preparedness. International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 1(3), 316–334.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eigner, I., Hamper, A., Wickramasinghe, N., Bodendorf, F. (2018). Using SWOT to Perform a Comparative Analysis of the German and Australian e-Health Systems. In: Wickramasinghe, N., Schaffer, J. (eds) Theories to Inform Superior Health Informatics Research and Practice. Healthcare Delivery in the Information Age. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72287-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72287-0_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72286-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72287-0
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)