IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pdn/ciepap/147.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

COVID-19 and Triage - A Public Health Economic Analysis of a Scarcity Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Bernard Michael Gilroy

    (Paderborn University)

  • Marie Wegener

    (Paderborn University)

  • Christian Peitz

    (Paderborn University)

Abstract

With the outbreak of the corona pandemic in Wuhan in 2019 and in early 2020 in Europe, the political and media discourse has been dominated by many health economic issues and discussions, ranging from systemic relevance to multiple shortages of vaccines, nurses, testing capacity and medical protective equipment. In the event of a scarcity of resources, the German Ethics Council1 recommended preparing for a possible “triage scenario” at the beginning of the pandemic.2 The aim of the article is to find out how advanced the current burden on intensive care units in Germany is due to the Corona pandemic and how close Germany is to a possible triage scenario. Therefore, the situation of German hospitals over a period of 30 years prior to the Corona pandemic is examined, and a comparison with OECD nations is made. This is followed by an analysis of the situation during Corona (with a focus on intensive care bed utilisation). Finally, the development and application of the triage scenario is examined, followed up by a brief discussion to what extent a triage system is compatible with the welfare state.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernard Michael Gilroy & Marie Wegener & Christian Peitz, 2021. "COVID-19 and Triage - A Public Health Economic Analysis of a Scarcity Problem," Working Papers CIE 147, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pdn:ciepap:147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/wp-wiwi/RePEc/pdf/ciepap/WP147.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ludwig Kuntz & Roman Mennicken & Stefan Scholtes, 2015. "Stress on the Ward: Evidence of Safety Tipping Points in Hospitals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(4), pages 754-771, April.
    2. Afschin Gandjour, 2021. "How Many Intensive Care Beds are Justifiable for Hospital Pandemic Preparedness? A Cost-effectiveness Analysis for COVID-19 in Germany," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 181-190, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mirko Kremer & Francis de Véricourt, 2022. "Mismanaging diagnostic accuracy under congestion," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-22-01, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    2. Rachna Shah & George P. Ball & Serguei Netessine, 2017. "Plant Operations and Product Recalls in the Automotive Industry: An Empirical Investigation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(8), pages 2439-2459, August.
    3. Robert J. Batt & Christian Terwiesch, 2017. "Early Task Initiation and Other Load-Adaptive Mechanisms in the Emergency Department," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3531-3551, November.
    4. Carina Fagefors & Björn Lantz, 2021. "Application of Portfolio Theory to Healthcare Capacity Management," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(2), pages 1-9, January.
    5. Carri W. Chan & Linda V. Green & Suparerk Lekwijit & Lijian Lu & Gabriel Escobar, 2019. "Assessing the Impact of Service Level When Customer Needs Are Uncertain: An Empirical Investigation of Hospital Step-Down Units," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 751-775, February.
    6. Hentschker, Corinna & Mennicken, Roman, 2014. "Selective-referral and Unobserved Patient Heterogeneity – Bias in the Volume-outcome Relationship," Ruhr Economic Papers 527, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    7. Seokjun Youn & H. Neil Geismar & Michael Pinedo, 2022. "Planning and scheduling in healthcare for better care coordination: Current understanding, trending topics, and future opportunities," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4407-4423, December.
    8. Mohammad Delasay & Armann Ingolfsson & Bora Kolfal, 2016. "Modeling Load and Overwork Effects in Queueing Systems with Adaptive Service Rates," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 867-885, August.
    9. Zeynep Akşin & Sarang Deo & Jónas Oddur Jónasson & Kamalini Ramdas, 2021. "Learning from Many: Partner Exposure and Team Familiarity in Fluid Teams," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 854-874, February.
    10. Song-Hee Kim & Carri W. Chan & Marcelo Olivares & Gabriel Escobar, 2015. "ICU Admission Control: An Empirical Study of Capacity Allocation and Its Implication for Patient Outcomes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 19-38, January.
    11. Sergi Jiménez-Martín & Catia Nicodemo & Stuart Redding, 2017. "The effect of changing the number of elective hospital admissions on the levels of emergency provision," Economics Working Papers 1582, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    12. Song, Malin & Zhou, Wenzhuo & Upadhyay, Arvind & Shen, Zhiyang, 2023. "Evaluating hospital performance with plant capacity utilization and machine learning," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    13. Shujing Sun & Susan F. Lu & Huaxia Rui, 2020. "Does Telemedicine Reduce Emergency Room Congestion? Evidence from New York State," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 972-986, September.
    14. Nilsen, Sara Marie & Asheim, Andreas & Carlsen, Fredrik & Anthun, Kjartan Sarheim & Vatten, Lars Johan & Aam, Stina & Davies, Neil M & Bjørngaard, Johan Håkon, 2022. "How do busy hospital circumstances affect mortality and readmission within 60 days: A cohort study of 680 000 acute admissions in Norway," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(8), pages 808-815.
    15. Diwas Singh KC, 2014. "Does Multitasking Improve Performance? Evidence from the Emergency Department," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 168-183, May.
    16. Hummy Song & Anita L. Tucker & Ryan Graue & Sarah Moravick & Julius J. Yang, 2020. "Capacity Pooling in Hospitals: The Hidden Consequences of Off-Service Placement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(9), pages 3825-3842, September.
    17. Luv Sharma & Deepa Goradia, 2023. "Will your insurance type influence clinical quality outcomes? An investigation of contributing factors, underlying mechanism, and consequences," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(7), pages 2207-2226, July.
    18. Ludwig Kuntz & Stefan Scholtes & Sandra Sülz, 2019. "Separate and Concentrate: Accounting for Patient Complexity in General Hospitals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2482-2501, June.
    19. Michael Freeman & Susan Robinson & Stefan Scholtes, 2021. "Gatekeeping, Fast and Slow: An Empirical Study of Referral Errors in the Emergency Department," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4209-4232, July.
    20. Frank Daumann & Florian Follert & Werner Gleißner & Endre Kamarás & Chantal Naumann, 2021. "Political Decision Making in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Germany from the Perspective of Risk Management," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-23, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • E10 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - General
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pdn:ciepap:147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WP-WiWi-Info or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cipadde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.