Breast Centers in Germany

A decrease in medical practice variations in national breast cancer care has been shown to improve survival and the negative impact of the disease on affected women and their families. The following report describes the concert of efforts undertaken by the medical societies to optimize national breast cancer care by organizational centralization of multidisciplinary medical competence in certified breast centers (CBC), aiming to attain continual quality of health care by implementation of evidence- and consensus-based guidelines. Centralization and the systematic pursuit of organizational development by tracking guideline adherence using performance quality indicators over time demonstrate the feasibility and practicability of the implementation concept to bridge the gap between determined scientific best evidence and applied best practice. However, the proof of concept will remain pending until the data of the population-based cancer registries are analyzed for survival estimates.