At present Germany experiences a shake-up of the hospital industry, following the introduction of a DRG-based hospital budgeting system. Hospital owners re-evaluate their assets and adapt their strategies to the new regulatory environment. Benchmarking studies play a vital role in assessing own...

Background: Cost-effectiveness outcomes collected in multinational health economic studies may vary across countries and geographic areas due to numerous clinical and socioeconomic factors. The between-country variability poses the question of generalizability of the cost-effectiveness...