Document is current

Article History

Received: 4 September 2019

Accepted: 22 October 2019

First Online: 1 December 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Data-sets used for this analysis were completely anonymized data provided by the German federal statistical office (DRG-statistic, ExternalRef removed) in compliance with the German data protection regulations. These Data are publicly accessible in general. However, the original DRG raw data by Destatis in the data complexity analyzed here are not publicly visible and need to be obtained as paid service for users as either zip- or access-data file (ExternalRef removed). Since there was no access to any individualized patient data whatsoever, no informed patient consent or ethical approval was needed for this study.

: Not applicable.

: JE has received travel grants from Daiichi-Sankyo and Bayer Vital and grants for the realization of scientific meetings by Bayer Health Care, Boehringer Ingelheim, Sanofi Aventis, and Pfizer. DB has received orders for analysis of the G-DRG system from Boehringer Ingelheim. RW has received speaker honoria from Medtronic/Covidien and Bristol Myers Squibb, and from serving on a scientific advisory board of Medtronic. AHK reports no disclosures. CW has received speaker and consultancy honoraria from Alexion, Amgen, Bayer-Schering. WH has received speaker and consultancy honoraria from Boehringer Ingelheim, Medtronic, Cerenovus and a research grant to perform ECASS4 from Boehringer Ingelheim. CK has received speaker honoraria and/or travel grants for scientific meetings from Bayer Vital, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and Daichii-Sankyo.