Background: Since the first prostate cancer center was certified by the German Cancer Society (DKG) in 2008, there are currently 94 centers at 95 sites. During certification, data on the implementation of the requirements are collected. These data can be used for benchmarking purposes.
Objectives: This paper describes the development and monitoring of indicators and presents a selection of recent results.
Materials and methods: The descriptive results on 18,288 primary cases from 91 sites with complete data are presented.
Results: The prostate cancer center certification system has reached a plateau both in regard to the absolute number of centers and the total proportion of all primary cases treated in Germany. The implementation of the requirements is at a high level overall, although some centers have difficulties fulfilling selected key figures, e.g., the study quota requirement.
Conclusion: The evaluation of current indicators documented good structural and process quality, which correspond for the most part to the target values for the total cohort. In the future, assessing medium and long-term outcome quality will be of greater importance, particularly with regard to patient-reported outcomes.
Keywords: Benchmarking; Certification; Patient reported outcomes; Quality of care; Tumordokumentationssystem.