TCM-Klinik Bad Kötzting

This open access hospital report 2025 of the Chinese German Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) includes the Patient Care Evaluation Programme of the first German hospital for traditional Chinese medicine from 2023. The scientific description of the structures, processes and results of the clinic's activities is supplemented by a follow-up survey of patients approximately 6 months after discharge from the  hospital until 2024.

The TCM-Klinik Bad Kötzting started its medical work in 1991 as the first German hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine in Germany and can treat German patients with statutory health insurance on the basis of a hospital referral. It is officially designated a university hospital of the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. Today, the hospital is a specialist clinic for psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, offering comprehensive inpatient care in conjunction with Traditional Chinese Medicine and in combination with 'conventional' and naturopathic/complementary medical therapies. In addition, a coach- and web-based lifestyle programme is another cornerstone of the overall intervention.

During the scientific monitoring of the hospital, it very quickly became clear that testing individual procedures - which are usually used in combination in everyday clinical practice - in exclusively randomised trials was practically impossible and only provided limited meaningful results. Pragmatic and innovative approaches are needed to enable doctors, patients, health insurers and politicians to make rational decisions. One possible solution is the Patient Care Evaluation Programme as a form of real-world evidence developed by Prof. D. Melchart.