ArticleBMC health services research2023
What drives health care spending in Switzerland? Findings from a decomposition by disease, health service, sex, and age.
Article in BMC health services research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Forecasting the Multidimensional Burdens of Hospital Admissions in LRTIs and COPD: Projections of Healthcare Expenditures, Resource Utilization, and Socioeconomic and Environmental Outcomes for Switzerland.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2026Article
- Digital Quality Monitoring for Type 2 Diabetes in Swiss Primary Care: Qualitative Interview Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- System Preparedness for Rising Kidney Replacement Therapy Demand: Late-Stage CKD Drives Costs, Healthcare Resource Utilisation and Environmental Impact in Switzerland.Advances in therapy · 2026Article
- Financial Burden in Adults With Chronic Illness in Switzerland: A Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Interviews Using Natural Language Processing and Topic Modeling.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Health care epidemiology, characteristics, and regional variation of chiropractic care in Switzerland: a descriptive study using insurance claims data.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Early viability assessment of a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) model for digital diabetes screening in Switzerland.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Strategies to Implement Knee Osteoarthritis Guidelines in Switzerland.Public health reviews · 2026Article
- Sense of meaning as a predictor of long-term therapy outcome in psychiatric inpatients: results of a one-year follow-up.Research in psychotherapy (Milano) · 2025Article
- The impact of ageing, socio-economic differences and the evolution of morbidity on future health expenditure - a dynamic microsimulation.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Health Care Spending Increases and Value in South Korea.JAMA health forum · 2025Article
- Evaluation of treatment costs for direct versus stepwise admission to home treatment.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Article
- Cost of illness analysis in individuals with overweight or obesity and chronic low back pain in the Bern metropolitan area (the BO2WL trial).Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Cost-consequence analysis of computer vision-based skin prick tests: implications for cost containment in Switzerland.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Designing Technologies for Value-based Mental Healthcare: Centering Clinicians' Perspectives on Outcomes Data Specification, Collection, and Use.Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. CHI ConferenceArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHigh and increasing spending dominates the public discussion on healthcare in Switzerland. However, the drivers of the spending increase are poorly understood. This study decomposes health care spending by diseases and other perspectives and estimates the contribution of single cost drivers to overall healthcare spending growth in Switzerland between 2012 and 2017.
methodsWe decompose total healthcare spending according to National Health Accounts by 48 major diseases, injuries, and other conditions, 20 health services, 21 age groups, and sex of patients. This decomposition is based on micro-data from a multitude of data sources such as the hospital inpatient registry, health and accident insurance claims data, and population surveys. We identify the contribution of four main drivers of spending: population growth, change in population structure (age/sex distribution), changes in disease prevalence, and changes in spending per prevalent patient.
resultsMental disorders were the most expensive major disease group in both 2012 and 2017, followed by musculoskeletal disorders and neurological disorders. Total health care spending increased by 19.7% between 2012 and 2017. An increase in spending per prevalent patient was the most important spending driver (43.5% of total increase), followed by changes in population size (29.8%), in population structure (14.5%), and in disease prevalence (12.2%).
conclusionsA large part of the recent health care spending growth in Switzerland was associated with increases in spending per patient. This may indicate an increase in the treatment intensity. Future research should show if the spending increases were cost-effective.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.