Improving the Hospital Quality of Care during Winter Periods by Optimizing Budget Allocation Between Rotavirus Vaccination and Bed Expansion

Dort, Thibaut; Schecroun, Nadia; Standaert, Baudouin

In the baseline setting the model assumed that A ¼ 1 (neutral scaling factor) and a ¼ b ¼ 0:5 (i.e., prevention and treatment contribute equally to the QoC-score improvement). Keeping a þ b ¼ 1 implies that the Cobb-Douglas function is first-order homogeneous in V and H with constant returns to scale and diminishing factor returns (i.e., a; b 2 ð0; 1Þ). Changing V and H by the same positive factor would result in an exactly proportional change in output. Furthermore, because the analysis omitted other factors that could influence the hospital QoCscore (e.g., income, location, hygiene promotion in hospitals, etc.), improvement is only determined by the model design of prevention through vaccination and treatment through extra hospital beds.