Günther Jonitz

"Medicine today resembles the church in the sixteenth century. What we need is a reformation.Few doctors are trained to judge and evaluate a scientific study I myself chose to be trained as a surgeon to avoid two things: statistics and psychology. Now I realize that both are indispensible"

—Günther Jonitz, President of the Berlin Chamber of Physicians

"It is impossible to measure patient safety, but you can measure patient safety culture. We must reach humans in the system first. There must be a paradigm shift in safety culture. In order to prevent errors, we must first be able to talk about and learn from errors. In addition, the press can help change patient safety culture on a national level."

—Günther Jonitz, President of the Berlin Chamber of Physicians

"You can look at three differently funded healthcare systems: state-sponsored healthcare in the U.K., pure market-based healthcare in the U.S., and Germany’s hybrid system. Regardless of how the systems are financed, they have the same problems, because they all share the same assembly line organization. The focus is on cost and not quality. Money can be made with very bad healthcare. We need to reorganize healthcare infrastructure to a value-based system. Patient safety is an important part of optimizing healthcare."

—Günther Jonitz, President of the Berlin Chamber of Physicians

"There are two things needed to bring an organization back to life. First, we must focus on patient outcomes. Second, we must turn the assembly line system into a learning system. Every healthcare system needs to ask itself, 'How does our hospital learn?'"

—Günther Jonitz, President of the Berlin Chamber of Physicians