[Prevention and health promotion in chronic patients as a responsibility of treatment institutions].

The tasks of prevention and health promotion involve more than lowering the probability that healthy people will fall ill. In view of the increase in chronic diseases, more must be done than presently customary to apply them not only to health assurance, including the preservation and augmentation of resources, but also to prevention of the probability that poor states of health will spread or grow worse. Implementation there of presupposes that curative institutions will cultivate preventive potentials. This article reflects on how that could be done: what prevention and health promotion in the case of chronic illness mean as tasks for curative institutions and how they can be conceptualized. To conclude with, the article shows what inhibitory conditions presently stand in the way of curative institutions attending to preventive and health-promotion tasks and what changes will be necessary to eradicate them.