"Patients often have to stay in hospital longer after a delirium and suffer from a reduced quality of life," says Privatdozent Dr. Thomas Saller, Managing Senior Physician at the Clinic for Anaesthesiology and Head of Anaesthesia in Orthopaedics at LMU Hospital. This makes it all the more important to act proactively and establish more preventative approaches in inpatient care. "With previous research projects, we have already been able to gain valuable insights here, which we can now implement on a broad scale with the support of the AOK," explains Dr. Saller.
The new treatment pathway provides for various preventative measures to avoid delirium. Patients are screened for delirium at an early stage, depending on their risk status. To this end, interdisciplinary teams of doctors, nurses and therapists discuss the individual risk of delirium and advise on appropriate prevention and treatment measures. In order to keep the fasting phase before the operation as short as possible, patients are given targeted support when eating and drinking. As part of delirium management, there is also training for staff at the hospital as well as for patients and their relatives.
"With the new quality contract, we want to help prevent complications such as post-operative delirium and thus improve the quality of care for patients. We are delighted to have gained a partner in LMU Klinikum München that has built up a great deal of expertise over the years with consistent delirium management," says Dr. Tobias Hermann, Head of the Inpatient Care Division at AOK Bayern.
With the Hospital Structure Act, the legislator created the possibility of concluding quality contracts in 2016. This is intended to test whether the quality of inpatient care can be further improved through innovative care concepts. AOK Bayern looks after more than 4.6 million insured persons in Bavaria and is the first point of contact locally for insured persons, healthcare partners and service providers with around 200 branches. This makes it the largest statutory health and long-term care insurance fund in Bavaria.
