[Cost-analyses of intensive care units].

The purpose of the paper is to study methods for costing hospital services specifically in relation to multi-unit studies of activity, case-mix, severity-of-illness, outcome, and resource use in adult intensive care units. The article reviews 20 published cost studies of adult intensive care units. The studies are all published in English and are both European and American. Cost of intensive care therapy is compared across the 20 studies. However, as stressed in the article, to compare costs of intensive care therapy across units is not possible for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is the fact that the studies employ different approaches to costing and thereby introduce a methodological bias. In addition, the costing methodology applied in the majority of the studies has been wrongly specified in relation to the purpose and the viewpoint of the studies. The article concludes that the methodologies for costing intensive care unit therapy are flawed and fail to provide correct answers. In addition, the study question is in most studies not adequately specified and the cost concept used in the studies is not tailored to the purposes of the studies.