Disease severity, quality of life and health care in plaque-type psoriasis: a multicenter prospective cross-sectional study in Germany. Dermatology. 2008;216:366–372. Patient Related Outcome Measures Publish your work in this journal Submit your manuscrip

Plaque-type psoriasis is of great importance in derma-tology as it produces significant morbidity, has a high im-pact on patients ’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and is of great socioeconomic importance for the health care system [1–6]. Particularly in recent years, the spot-light on patients ’ health care has become of special inter-est, as the German health care system has increasingly focused on the patient’s perspective. In 2004, the inde-pendent scientific Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care was founded to evaluate the benefits of med-ical services to the patients. Even though the term ‘ben-efit ’ has not been clearly defined by the institute, it is gen-erally considered as ‘patient-defined benefit’, indicating the need for health assessment from the patient’s perspec-tive [1, 2]