Cost containment: Europe. Switzerland.

Thanks to Switzerland's very favorable economic situation over the last 20 yrs, intensive care medicine in the country has reached a very satisfactory level. The country is covered by a dense network of ICUs certified by the Swiss Society of Intensive Care Medicine (SSICM). Bed allocation is generous, technological equipment plentiful, and nurses are well trained in a specialized certification program. Rules imposed on physician training by the SSICM have recently become more stringent. A large supply of money in Switzerland has made cost containment efforts a low priority; no well defined program to reduce intensive care costs is in effect. Due to an increasingly difficult economic situation in the future, Switerland's near optimal healthcare system may change; cost containment will probably have to be dealt with seriously in the near future.