Background: Even more than hospital care in general, intensive care and mechanical ventilation capacities and its utilization in terms of rates, indications, ventilation types and outcomes vary largely among countries. We analyzed complete and nationwide data for Germany, a country with a large intensive care sector, before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Analysis of administrative claims data, provided by the German health insurance, from all hospitals for all individual patients who were mechanically ventilated between 2019 and 2022.