Sensitivity analysis
In the sensitivity analysis by bootstrapping, all 1000 drawings showed home phototherapy as the cost-saving alternative, with savings ranging from €483 to €1152 when hospital treatment was offered at the maternity unit.For treatment duration, 40% of the drawings showed home phototherapy as the more effective, i.e. having a shorter treatment duration; however, the 60% of drawings with shorter hospital than at-home treatments showed that each reduced hour cost on average €600 when infants were treated at the maternity unit (implying a higher cost at the neonatal unit). In 65% of the drawings, the difference in treatment duration was ± 12 h. Fewer than 5% of the drawings showed differences > 24 h.Deterministic analysis shows that transportation costs would need to be multiplied by 100 to change the recommendation by making hospital treatment at the maternity unit less expensive than treatment at home. If treating infants at the neonatal unit, transportation costs would have to be multiplied by more than a factor of 200 to be less expensive than treatment at home. Furthermore, outpatients visits would have to cost 10 times more per infant treated for home phototherapy to equal the cost of hospital treatment at the maternity unit, and more than 20 times higher to be as expensive as treatment at the neonatal unit.