Optimising the Rehabilitation Discharge Report of the German Statutory Pension Insurance: The Recipients' and Users' Perspectives

Background: Given the significance of documentation and information transfer in the healthcare system as well as new technological options, there is a need for continuously modifying and enhancing the pension insurance's rehabilitation discharge report while taking into account the benefits and expenses associated with it. Among the regular discharge report recipients/users are general practitioners, medical specialists, sociomedical consultants of the German pension insurance and other health-care providers and funding agencies (e.g., statutory health insurance, federal labour agency), external socio-medical consultants, judges in charge of social legislation issues, pension insurance administrators, and rehabilitation quality assurance officials. In the context of a broader project on the optimisation of the pension insurance's rehabilitation discharge report, the specific needs and interests of its recipients/users as well as suggestions concerning the improvement of structure and content of the discharge report were assessed. Method: Discharge report recipients/users were asked via questionnaire to indicate how frequently they use certain information from the report for their work. They were also asked to state objections/areas of concern and suggestions for improvement. Results: 400 recipients/users filled in the questionnaire. More than half of the respondents considered the discharge report too long. Suggestions for shortening the report centred on avoiding redundancies and including standardised response items instead of free text passages. User groups differed with regard to the content that should be subject to reductions. Conclusions: The non-representative sample notwithstanding, the survey's results have rendered important starting points for optimising the statutory pension insurance's discharge report.