ArticleApplied health economics and health policy2021
How Many Intensive Care Beds are Justifiable for Hospital Pandemic Preparedness? A Cost-effectiveness Analysis for COVID-19 in Germany.
Article in Applied health economics and health policy, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Health Economic Evaluations in Intensive Care: An Updated Systematic Review.Critical care explorations · 2025Pooled it
- Cost of the COVID-19 pandemic versus the cost-effectiveness of mitigation strategies in EU/UK/OECD: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2023Pooled it
- Cost-effectiveness of interventions for the prevention and control of COVID-19: Systematic review of 85 modelling studies.Journal of global health · 2022Pooled it
- Cost-Effectiveness of COVID-19 Policy Measures: A Systematic Review.Value in health : the journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research · 2021Pooled it
- Economic evaluation of programs against COVID-19: A systematic review.International journal of surgery (London, England) · 2021Pooled it
- Cost-Effectiveness in Critical Care: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evaluations.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Article
- Article
- COVID-19-associated costs and mortality in Germany: an incidence-based analysis from a payer's perspective.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Esophageal and Gastric Cancer Surgery in Germany: A Four-Year Retrospective Single-Center Study of 287 Patients.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Mechanical ventilation as a major driver of COVID-19 hospitalization costs: a costing study in a German setting.Health economics review · 2024Article
- Cost-effectiveness analysis of isolation strategies for asymptomatic and mild symptom COVID-19 patients.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2023Article
- Value of information analysis for pandemic response: intensive care unit preparedness at the onset of COVID-19.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- Economic evaluation of strategies against coronavirus: a systematic review.Health economics review · 2023Review
- Cost-effectiveness of future lockdown policies against the COVID-19 pandemic.Health services management research · 2023Article
- COVID-19 and the forgone health benefits of elective operations.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- The implications of globalization on COVID-19 vaccination in Europe.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Mortality of Mechanically Ventilated COVID-19 Patients in Traditional versus Expanded Intensive Care Units in New York.Annals of the American Thoracic Society · 2022Article
- Economic evaluations of interventions against viral pandemics: a scoping review.Public health · 2022Article
- Balancing financial incentives during COVID-19: A comparison of provider payment adjustments across 20 countries.Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionGermany is experiencing the second COVID-19 pandemic wave. The intensive care unit (ICU) bed capacity is an important consideration in the response to the pandemic. The purpose of this study was to determine the costs and benefits of maintaining or expanding a staffed ICU bed reserve capacity in Germany.
methodsThis study compared the provision of additional capacity to no intervention from a societal perspective. A decision model was developed using, e.g. information on age-specific fatality rates, ICU costs and outcomes, and the herd protection threshold. The net monetary benefit (NMB) was calculated based upon the willingness to pay for new medicines for the treatment of cancer, a condition with a similar disease burden in the near term.
resultsThe marginal cost-effectiveness ratio (MCER) of the last bed added to the existing ICU capacity is €21,958 per life-year gained assuming full bed utilization. The NMB decreases with an additional expansion but remains positive for utilization rates as low as 2%. In a sensitivity analysis, the variables with the highest impact on the MCER were the mortality rates in the ICU and after discharge.
conclusionsThis article demonstrates the applicability of cost-effectiveness analysis to policies of hospital pandemic preparedness and response capacity strengthening. In Germany, the provision of a staffed ICU bed reserve capacity appears to be cost-effective even for a low probability of bed utilization.
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