[How to calculate the budget of an anaesthetic or intensive care department from revenues of g-DRGs].

In Germany the economical framework of the health system in general and the hospitals in particular has changed dramatically over the last years. The conversion of funding to DRGs has implicated a reduction of budgets. The apportioning of budgets by keys of officially calculating hospitals forces single departments and disciplines to choose financial goals of a hospital as their particular interest and not the financial goals of a department. The calculation of a budget for a department of anaesthesia and/or intensive care medicine is possible from fractions of all DRGs, that have been generated inside a hospital within a period of one year. However, this calculation comprises some problems, because anaesthesia and intensive care medicine are interdisciplinary disciplines, which cannot influence its achievements and its processes solely by its own, but are dependent on efficiency and quality of its partners. Internal cost allocation for improving processes seems not to be sensible in the system of DRGs as long as it is used not only as an instrument of controlling, but also as an instrument of benchmarking.