Information for patients

Dear Patient We know how important your health is. To ensure the maintenance of a high quality of treatment and to facilitate ongoing improvements, over 400 hospitals and clinics collect data on a range of aspects every year on our behalf. This includes, for example, determining levels of patient satisfaction and monitoring wound infection rates after surgical procedures. Some information will be collected on specific dates while other information will be gathered over certain periods. It is also possible that you may be asked if you wish to take part in an ANQ review while you are in hospital or a clinic. 

ANQ reviews: a brief guide
Explanatory Video
Explanatory Video with subtitles

The benefit to you: ongoing improvements

The more patients take part in the ANQ reviews, the more meaningful the results will be. If they are provided with clear and precise results, hospitals and clinics can develop targeted quality-enhancing measures. This is of direct benefit to patients; very often, the results and findings from the reviews directly influence how treatments are provided. We would like to thank you in advance for taking part. 

The confidentiality of your data is guaranteed
All data collected will be treated as strictly confidential. The results of our reviews will be processed in a form that make it impossible to identify you or draw any conclusions about you as a person, about your illness or the incident that resulted in your hospitalisation. 

Objective of the ANQ reviews

Our aim is to promote quality in hospitals and clinics. The in-depth evaluation of the review results will allow these institutions to continually improve the quality of treatment and care they provide to the benefit of their patients. Transparent publication of review results by individual hospitals and clinics also makes it possible to undertake a nationwide comparison of individual institutions. Both positive and negative changes occurring over a period of several years can also be identified. 

The correct decisions on the basis of accurate information
The ANQ web portal contains a wealth of information as well as interactive graphics and additional commentaries on the reviews and their results. Much of this information is aimed primarily at health professionals. The press releases including the abridged versions of the National Comparison Reports and the infographics should be of interest to patients. An important factor to bear in mind about the results: individual review results do not allow conclusions to be drawn as to the overall quality of an institution. A hospital or a clinic can thus get an excellent score for one review variable, but show an above-average potential for improvement in another. It is for this reason that we also do not publish any form of ranking system or performance table. 

The ANQ: Who are we – what do we do

ANQ operates in partnership with the Swiss Hospital Association (H+), the Swiss insurance associations (santésuisse, curafutura and the federal social insurance organisations that provide accident, military and disability insurance in Switzerland), the cantons and the Principality of Liechtenstein. We are a non-profit organisation.

We plan and implement regular quality reviews in approximately 400 Swiss hospitals and clinics in the sectors of in-patient acute care, psychiatry and rehabilitation in partnership with experts from independent review bodies and survey institutes.  We publish the results of our reviews on our web portal and through the media.

ANQ quality reviews are undertaken in compliance with the provisions of the Swiss Health Insurance Act (Krankenversicherungsgesetz [KVG]), which prescribes contractual quality assurance agreements for service providers (hospitals and clinics) and cost bearers (insurers and cantons). The ANQ was founded in 2009 to implement the statutory requirements for quality reviews as efficiently as possible.