[Uncertainties in preliminary calculations of overall treatment costs with special reference to costs of medical risk].

This paper explains the problems in calculating global compensation for medical treatment from the physician's point of view. This new system of financing hospitals will be introduced in Germany in 1996. In routine procedures such as tonsillectomy, the costs for complications are not sufficiently included in the price calculation. Basing on "postoperative bleeding after tonsillectomy" as an example, we calculated the costs of this complication per year. A scheme for calculating these costs as well as the costs for concomitant diseases for each case is presented. Evidently the overall price does not include substantial costs, and hence foreseeable losses are inevitable.