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 one-way sensitivity analyses data inputs are varied by ± 25% and the impact on outcome measures is assessed, i.e., optimal allocation between prevention and treatment as well as the minimum budget needed. Moreover, since the baseline relative contributions of vaccination and extra beds to the hospital QoC-score improvement are set arbitrarily, and are therefore not estimated from observed data, sensitivity of model outputs with respect to these parameters is also assessed. In particular, the values of a and b are tested over six different scenarios, including the baseline values to ease the comparison, as shown in Table 2 . Scenario III reflects a higher contribution to improvement in QoC-scores from vaccination versus extra hospital beds. To relax the assumption of constant returns to scale (i.e., a þ b ¼ 1), scenarios IV and V reflected equal relative contributions to QoC-score improvement while considering decreasing (i.e., a þ b\1) or increasing (i.e., a þ b [ 1) returns to scale, respectively. Scenario VI also assumes increasing returns to scale but reflects a higher contribution of V, for instance to account for potential additional benefits such as herd protection and reduction in AMR and nosocomial infections.