*3.7. Sensitivity Analyses*

Since costs of nutritional supplements may vary in different health states and care sites, we performed a sensitivity analysis to determine whether cost savings would be maintained when the costs of nutritional supplements were 5 SF per day (lower bound), 100 SF per day (medium bound), and 1000 SF per day (upper bound).

Further, we ran sensitivity analyses (1) assuming 50% of discharged patients would continue oral nutritional support in the outpatient setting (5 SF per day, corresponding to one oral supplement per day) and (2) assuming 100% of discharged patients would continue nutritional support in the outpatient setting (5 SF per day). We also analyzed the costs per life-year. Therefore, we extrapolated the data from 180 days to 365 days. Finally, we investigated which costs for nutritional support would still be cost-effective at a threshold of 100,000 SF per life-year.

We followed the international modeling guidelines of the ISPOR SMDM Modeling Good Research Practices Task Force [33,34] and the reporting recommendations of the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement [35].
