medfuehrer.de
"It is our goal to strongly push transparency in the health market in Germany in order to provide more stable and most of all verified transparency with our quality assured presentation concept for physicians and hospitals."
For more than 11 years, medfuehrer.de has been informing patients, family members and referring physicians about all services offered at hospitals, specialized departments, private practices and nursing homes. On the internet, medfuehrer.de has established itself as an expert and market leader for holistic, quality assured, evidence based and neutral information about physicians, hospitals, nursing care and general health. Each patient wants to ensure the best possible medical care. When searching for a suitable hospital and an experienced specialist, a lot of patients often don’t know where and in what medium they are able to find in-depth and reliable health information. We develop profound solutions for the areas of medical transparency and health information.
With more than 25 million page impressions and approx. 11 million visitors per year, www.medfuehrer.de is one of the leading internet platforms for information about physicians, hospitals, nursing care and general health. Our service is free of charge.
Since the late 1990s, we have been dealing with the issue of medical transparency, especially concerning hospitals and medical institutions. We have helped define the presentation standards for medical institutions in Germany and see ourselves as pioneers in the area of medical transparency. It is becoming more and more important for physicians, hospitals and nursing homes to present themselves right where patients and their family members are searching for help. On www.medfuehrer.de it is possible to directly position yourself among patients, their family members and referring physicians in a quality assured and controlled environment. Due to medfuehrer.de’s dual strategy (valuable information about physicians and hospitals in addition to educational articles about general health questions) and an exceedingly high ranking on Google, we are one of the most important starting points for patients, their family members and referring physicians.
Quality standards
medfuehrer.de’s unique selling proposition in regard to information about physicians and hospitals is to offer profound information about diagnostic and therapeutic focal points and the top 10 ICD-OPS coefficients of performance (one of a kind in Germany) which we have edited in cooperation with renowned medical co-publishers and counselors in order to be clearly understandable for everyone. In the area of cancer and certified cancer centers (such as certified breast cancer centers and certified centers for intestinal cancer, etc.), we have developed new presentation standards for patients, their family members and referring physicians which are absolutely unique in regard to medical transparency concerning cancer. Based on this effort and with the help of experienced nursing home directors, we have also developed a presentation concept for nursing homes and assisted living. All hospitals and their specialized departments, physicians and nursing homes that openly showcase these contents, numbers and samples in their presentation will be awarded with the quality label for medical transparency promoted by the Deutscher Verlag fuer Gesundheitsinformation LLC.
The quality label “transparent hospital” – convincing on a regional level
The quality label “transparent hospital“ is an award of transparency promoted by the Deutscher Verlag fuer Gesundheitsinformation LLC. This concept was developed in cooperation with scientific associations, opinion leaders, counselors and media partners. Since 2005, the company has been honoring hospitals, specialty departments, private practices and nursing homes with this award each year. Hence, the company supports the commitment of all medical institutions that present themselves openly and transparently to the public. Over the last few years, more than 2,000 quality labels have been awarded to different specialty departments in medical institutions.
Medfuehrer.de Specialty Sections
Search for physicians, hospitals and nursing homes
All 18 specialty sections on www.medfuehrer.de offer information about the services of the listed physicians, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursing homes in their respective specialties. Special search offers enable an individual search. In the German Klinik-Fuehrer (hospital guide) patients as well as referring physicians can find efficient hospitals and private practices for specific medical conditions, treatments, therapies and surgeries. Hospitals and private practices that present themselves on medfuehrer.de with detailed information, value the homogeneous questionnaire on the basis of all relevant operating numbers of each quality guideline since this offers them the opportunity to present themselves in a neutral manner but still with in-depth information about their specific offered services. For several years already, attending physicians and managers in hospitals and medical institutions have placed their trust in the excellent quality standard on medfuehrer.de The unique breakdown of www.medfuehrer.de into specialty sectons creates a specific marketing tool for physicians, hospitals and nursing care targeted directly are their focus groups. All visitors, who use our health platform and the German Klinik-Fuehrer, are predominantly patients, their family members and referring physicians who are searching the internet for high quality health information or who would like to find comprehensive information about all services offered by certain physicians, hospitals and nursing homes. Since most patients are seldom searching for general medical information but rather for a particular medical condition and treatment method, www.medfuehrer.de is divided into 18 different specialty sections which is unique in Germany.
Medical articles providing in-depth health information
In addition to the extensive and quality assured search for physicians, hospitals and nursing homes, www.medfuehrer.de also offers valuable health information in its specialty sections. The content of each specialty sections is compiled and edited by opinion leaders, physicians and medical editors in order to supply our users with extensive and scientifically correct information. Articles about more than 550 different medical conditions and 650 treatment methods can be found in the different specialty sections. Numerous of our discussed topics are ranked in the top 10 on Google.
350,000 healthcare records
medfuehrer.de offers an extensive address database comprising the most important areas of patient care. Users are able to search more than 350,000 records for addresses of private practices, therapists, pharmacists, natural health professionals, nursing homes, assisted living, support groups as well as veterinarians and can directly contact them through our platform. Recommendations and evaluations of physicians, hospitals and nursing homes contribute to more transparency in the healthcare sector.
One of the leading evaluation portals for physicians/hospitals/nursing homes in Germany
Public evaluation platforms for physicians are always looked upon rather skeptically by both media and physicians respectively. It is always discussed whether patients are able to evaluate a certain medical treatment at all and whether public evaluation platforms can even convey the complexity of medical care by issuing and displaying a rather simplified questionnaire. Many physicians fear to be judged rather unfair or to be vilified on purpose. These questions, reservations and fears are justified by all means. We have debated for a very long time whether we should provide a platform for public evaluations of physicians and their services on our health platform medfuehrer.de. We have thoroughly discussed the pros and cons and finally decided to offer this service to our users as we want to do justice to our goal to strongly support medical transparency. During the development of this rather challenging project, the University of Trier has been our very competent and always helpful partner. In February 2009, our questionnaire was ammended according to the recommendations of a research team at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Since 2011, residents and their family members are also able to evaluate nursing homes by filling out a modified questionnaire on medfuehrer.de
