Datenquellen zum Krankengeld im deutschen Gesundheitswesen – eine Übersicht sowie Empfehlungen für die Versorgungsforschung

Abstract

BackgroundVarious data sources on sick pay exist in the German health care system. For future analyses, it is relevant to know which data sources are suitable for which research questions, which variables they include, how they can be accessed and which limitations are to be considered. This article offers a comprehensive overview. MethodsThe German Advisory Council on the Assessment of Developments in the Health Care System used various data sources for its special report on sick pay. For this purpose, several individual agreements with institutions have been made. Insights from these analyses have been systematically analysed and described. ResultsImportant data sources on sick pay and sick pay recipients include the official statistics hosted by the Federal Ministry of Health and the data of single sickness funds. Moreover, the dataset of the morbidity-oriented risk structure compensation scheme includes some information on sick pay – partly on a regional level. Furthermore, data on cases of long-term incapacity to work, e. g. from the AOK sickness funds, can be used as an approximation for sick pay cases. The available data sources differ regarding available variables, data format, available time course and representativeness. Discussion and conclusionWhich data source is most suitable for analyses of sick pay and sick pay recipients, strongly depends on the research question. There may be a trade-off between depth and applicable analytical methods on the one hand (e. g. with data of single sickness funds) versus representativeness and a long-term course on the other hand (e. g. with official statistics). Finally, several recommendations are made on how to further improve the informative value and comparability of data, especially among sickness funds.