title: [Cost-effectiveness study of internist joint practices].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Practicing doctors are managers of their own practice. A doctor, who manages his practice besides his technical qualification, considering business aspects, enables a solid economic base. The objective of this article is to point out key starting points for an effective management of internist doctors' practices.
  
  
  METHODS
  Within the article it has particularly been analyzed, to what extent cooperations make an impact on the return and cost structure. For this purpose, a total of 495 business assessments from the DATEV eG of internist doctors' practices have been analyzed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The percental returns of smaller internistic joint practices (averaged turnover: 573,071 Euros) is about 6% higher than the percental returns of internistic doctors' practices (averaged turnover: 384,049 Euros). This result shows that small internistic joint practices work more efficiently. In contrast to this result bigger joint practices (averaged turnover: 1,618,608 Euros) gain an about 6% lower percental return than internistic doctors' practices. The reasons for this result are, compared to the internistic doctors' practices, the higher consumption of materials (+7%), the higher personnel costs (+3.5%), and the higher occupancy costs (+0.2%). On the basis of these results it can be concluded, that medium-sized internistic joint practices work more efficiently than internistic doctors' practices as well as large internistic joint practices.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  On the basis of the results it can be concluded, that internist cooperations can make good economic sense. However, the extent of cost efficiency and profit increase is particularly dependent on the size of the practice, the offered service portfolio, and the human resource management.
authors.affiliation: dupierry@gmx.de
authors.forename: Raphael Patrick
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Dupierry
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kaschny
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000191:economics; D005858:Germany; D006123:Group Practice / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000191:economics*; D011216:Practice Management, Medical / Q000191:economics*; D011331:Private Practice / Q000191:economics