[Risk management to control increased and more costly malpractice suits].

Considerable increase of premium for risk-insurance demands now risk management (RM) in German hospitals. RM is more than quality management and has other goals. The method we are using to analyse the risk in hospitals is given in detail. By this way we cover the main groups of potential personal damage of patients and reasons and fundamentals to sue the hospital. There is no total quality management (TQM) in hospitals without RM in the medical field. RM can be successful only with the awareness of medical and nursing staff for risks and liability claims. In our experience there is a lot of potential damages and sources of liability demands even in hospitals which seem to be well managed.