[Treatment goals as an instrument of quality management in psychosomatic rehabilitation].

The present article outlines the development of a system of categories of treatment goals in psychosomatic rehabilitation. As a first step a content analysis of 242 letters of discharge was carried out. In order to give a systematic describe of the thus extracted goals a system of categories was developed. Which was then in a second step used as the basis for detailed discussions by psychosomatic rehabilitation experts aimed at revising and optimizing the system of categories. This developed classification of treatment goals--owning to the possibility in principle of operationalization--will provide the conditions for further strategies within the context of evaluation and measures of quality assurance.