Statistics on the rehabilitation services - Methods [general]

Data owner: German Annuity Insurance Federation

Statistics on the rehabilitation services

1. Basics, realization and analysis

1.1 Preliminary remark

With the publication "Statistik der Deutschen Rentenversicherung Rehabilitation" a comprehensive analysis of the services for medical rehabilitation, the other measures to ensure participation and the services for participation in professional life in the Statutory Pension Insurance in the Federal Republic of Germany is presented.

The data includes among important demographic characteristics also data from the medical discharge reports. The following remarks refer basically to the completed services to ensure participation all over Germany.

1.2 Basics and content of the statistics

Basics of the statistics are the administrative processes for the assessment of services to ensure participation of the 14 regional organizations, the German Annuity Insurance Federation and the German pension insurance miners-railway-sea ("Deutsche Rentenversicherung Knappschaft-Bahn-See").

For each beneficiary, who got a medical service for rehabilitation according to §§ 14, 15, 15a, 17, 31 SGB VI or a service for participation in professional life according to § 16 SGB VI, data are collected before, during and at the end of the service, which are used for medical assessment and for the organizational processing of services to ensure participation.

This data and some additional statistical characteristics, which the insurance organisation makes available from the insurance account, are joined in a rehab-statistics-database. So, at the insurance organization the main characteristics of rehabilitation are intertwined in the rehab-statistics-database. It serves as data base for the reporting about rehabilitation except the monthly statistics about the applications for rehabilitation services and their settlement according to § 3 RSVwV and the monthly statistics about the length of the application process ("Reha-Antragslaufzeiten-Statistik").

The number of reported "completed services to ensure participation" is the result of the number of services to ensure participation effectively completed in the same year and the services, of which the whole rehabilitation procedure for the relevant reporting year had not yet been saved in the insurance account on a certain reference day and which were therefore later notified in order to ensure a full coverage in the reporting year.
On the other hand it can be assumed, that also in this analysis a similar number of completed services of the reporting year are not statistically recorded. Thus, the number of statistically recorded services to ensure participation might differ only marginally from the number of services to ensure participation completed in the reporting year.

1.3 Realization of the statistics

1.3.1 Data collection and error checking

The rehab-statistics-database is the consistent basis for the total field of tasks of rehabilitation reporting for all insurance organizations. The insurance organizations subject the created records of the rehab-statistics-database ("Reha-Statistik-Datenbasis") to a uniform plausibility check programme. With this programme possible inconsistencies shall be revealed, as they may occur especially by inadequate manual encoding. The pseudonymised, inspected, faultless and possibly corrected data sets in the rehab-statistics-database are provided by the insurance organizations to the German Annuity Insurance Federation; they are the data basis for the statistics.

1.3.2 Analysis

The summary of the published statistical analyses in the "Statistik der Deutschen Rentenversicherung Rehabilitation" took place from the point of view of known information needs and the time series continuity. Data sets about granted, but not realized measures to ensure participation and about commissioned benefits for other organizations are not included in the analyses.

2. Commentary on selected characteristics

2.1 Encoding of diagnoses

With implementation of the rehab-statistics-database with the insurance organizations starting from 1 January 1994 five diagnoses - as far as medically noticed - have been recorded in the statistics data set, The order of the diagnoses is determined by the physician according to their importance for the measures to ensure participation. From 1 January 2004 the uniform diagnosis key ICD-10 GM as amended from time to time has been used to code the diagnoses. The keys represent the first three digits of the basic classification of the diagnoses and are only in some cases completed with (marked) additional text as coding guidances or reading aids. Additionally, for disease groups with socio medical relevance necessary differentiations and specifications were included on the four- and five-digit level. Because of their higher informative value these four- and five-digit keys from the diagnosis catalogue should be preferred.

Two other information items about the diagnosis are side localisation and diagnosis security. They are encoded alphabetically for completion and clarification. But these are not analysed in the publication "Statistik der Deutschen Rentenversicherung Rehabilitation".

The last encoded digit of the diagnosis gives information about the medical result of the treatment referring to the pre-mentioned individual diagnosis.

2.2 Insurance organizations

On 1 January 2005 the previous insurance organizations

• statutory pension insurance for manual workers and
• statutory pension insurance for salaried employees

have been combined to form the general pension insurance. Additionally, there still is the miners' pension insurance.

2.3 Age determination

The year of birth of the rehabilitant is, if he/she is insured, taken from the insurance account into the dataset. For analyses the age is determined from the difference of the year, when the service was finished and the year of birth.

Extract from:
Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund (DRV) (Hrsg.),
DRV Statistik Rehabilitation, verschiedene Jahrgänge Berlin.
ISSN 1862-9970. (only in German)