Optimal productive size of hospital's intensive care units

To summarize our findings, we find that 60% of intensive care units are operating at increasing returns to scale, 10% are operating at optimal productive size and 30% are characterized by decreasing returns to scale. In average intensive care units operate 40% under the optimal size. The policy implication of this result should be an increase of the size of all types of intensive care units to meet productivity gains. The picture is completely reversed at the aggregate hospital level. Here decreasing returns to scale prevail for 65% of hospitals while only one fourth are operating at increasing returns to scale. In average hospitals' number of beds should decrease by 40% to reach the optimal productivity size. One policy solution may include reallocating resources from general beds to the more specialized beds.