Epidemiology: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

Socio-political and economic Health Care decisions are often made on the basis of disease statistics alone. However, due to the changing panorama of diseases taking place in our century, especially healthcare of chronically diseased persons is often going along with impairing and cost-intensive, life-long concomitant personal and insurance-straining sequelae like rehabilitation, psycho-social assistance, sick-benefits, invalidity pension or long-term care. These impacts must be considered simultaneously for appropriate decisions. In social welfare states legislature is increasingly following the Bio-Psycho-Social Disease Model instead of the Bio-Medical Disease Model alone, aiming to achieve an inclusive society and putting into effect the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Therefore time has come to merger both disease models. A merger of the two underlying WHO classifications, ICD and ICF, is overdue to enrich the instrument box of public health statistics for political decision makers.

Biography

Wolfgang Seger has worked as a doctor of medicine at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1977 and received his license as a physician in 1978. Afterwards, he was initially a research assistant at the Institute of Clinical Radiology at Hanover Medical University. After working at various clinics, he opened his main practice in internal medicine/ gastroenterology in Bad Pyrmont in 1985 and was a consultant for the operative therapy of two clinics. From 1989 to 1991, Seger was a senior physician at the Lorch Social Medicine Clinic, and until 1994 he was the senior physician of the Social Medicine Department of the LVA Oldenburg-Bremen. In 1994 Seger became a senior physician of the medical service of the health insurance of Lower Saxony (MDKN) and in 1997 his deputy managing director. In 1998 the University of Bremen was appointed honorary professor for rehabilitation medicine.