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

The target to improve the QoC-scores in this exercise has been set at 50%. However, the QoC-scores of the pediatric ward in the Belgian study improved by more than 100% after introducing the vaccine [4] . Vaccination alone could therefore easily be sufficient to reach the improvement level proposed in our exercise. Our analysis is thus quite conservative. However, the purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate new ways of presenting the economic value of vaccine prevention as opposed to extra treatment, solving an existing and specific healthcare problem [27] . It gives the decision maker another analysis framework when he/she needs to invest in one or another option for achieving specific healthcare goals. The results of the exercise indicate that increased childhood vaccination could prevent or even reduce pediatric treatment care. This is now reflected in rotavirus vaccination post-implementation data, showing that when current-day pricing and herd effects are accounted for, the vaccination is cost effective and can even be cost saving [28] . The trade-off between vaccination and adding extra beds may in the future become the trade-off between vaccination and bed reduction in order to improve the QoC at a reasonable extra cost if more vaccination options against other infections are available.