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.
Foreword 1.- Foreword 2.- Foreword 3.- Acknowledgement.- Declaration.-
Ethics approval.- About the Author.-
1. The Patient Care Evaluation
Programme.-
2. Structural Profile of the TCM-Klinik Bad Kötzting.-
3. Patient
Profile.-
4. Intervention Profile.-
5. Outcome Profile.-
6. Evaluation and
Quality Assurance Profile of the TCM-Klinik Bad Kötzting.-
7. Summary and
Conclusion of the Patient Care Evaluation Programme (PEP) TCM-Klinik Bad
Kötzting Clinic Report 2025.
From 2010 to 2015, Prof. Dr. med. Dieter Melchart held the first professorship for naturopathy and complementary medicine in Bavaria at the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) (endowed professorship of the Erich Rothenfußer Foundation, Munich). There, he headed the Competence Centre for Complementary Medicine and Naturopathy (CoCoNat) at the Klinikum rechts der Isar and the associated outpatient clinic and day clinic for naturopathy and health promotion. In addition, Dieter Melchart was titular professor at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, from 2010 to 2019 and is a visiting professor at Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Since 2020, he has been an honorary professor of complementary medicine and individual health management (IHM) at the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT), Germany, and was head of the CoCoNat until 2025.
Since 1991, Dieter Melchart has been chairman of the scientific advisory board of the first German clinic for traditional Chinese medicine in Bad Kötzting, Germany. His research focuses on the clinical evaluation of acupuncture, TCM medicines and lifestyle medicine. As an adjunct professor of naturopathy, Melchart continues to lecture on naturopathy in interdisciplinary subject 12 at the Technical University of Munich and supervises doctoral theses.
