Subjective health and heed for medical rehabilitation by patients insured by the Federal German Statutory Health Insurance Scheme who apply for such rehabilitation

Unlike services paid through the Federal German Health Insurance, applications for medical rehabilitation are granted based on defined criteria. In some cases, rehabilitation is granted without apparent reason. Seeking to minimize this problem, this study integrates information on the subjective health status into the decision-making process of medical examiners. The return rate of the postal questionnaire (87%) as well as the evaluation of the examiners documented the practicability of the approach. The interviewed applicants described themselves as more limited in their abilities on several health dimensions (ICIDH) compared to a population of prestationary interviewed rehabilitation patients, whereby the standard deviations in both populations were similar. Furthermore, the applicants rarely utilized complementary treatments and sociomedical/legal advice. A surprising result lies in the mostly non-existent association between the subjective health status and the medical decisions. This constitutes a significant difficulty in legitimizing the decision-making process of the medical examiners.