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 advantages of using a generalized form of the Cobb-Douglas function is that the equation is convenient to work with as it has nice mathematical properties and can easily be translated into an econometric model [32] . In the analysis presented here, the labour component of the original function has been replaced by prevention. The reason for doing this is twofold. First, the cost of an extra bed includes medical staff costs. Second, as shown in Fig. 5 , there is a significant decrease in AGE-related bed occupancy rates after the introduction of rotavirus vaccination. Combining these factors using a multivariate power function, such as the Cobb-Douglas one, seemed appropriate since vaccination and extra hospital beds interact together and may have a significantly positive, eventually diminishing, marginal impact on hospital QoC-scores.