Background: Community Nursing is a new care model in Austria to strengthen the health of the elderly population. It is unclear whether the use of community nursing should be recommended from an economic point of view.

Methods: A systematic literature review of economic studies of community nursing was conducted. Eleven studies (eight economic evaluations, three systematic literature reviews) met the inclusion criteria. Their data were extracted and summarised narratively. Quality assessment of the studies was performed using the CHEC checklist or the AMSTAR II tool.

Results: The studies do not show a clear result regarding the cost-effectiveness of community nursing. Particularly in Europe, the number of studies is sparse. Initially, costs tend to increase due to the intervention costs, but there are indications that hospitalisations and rehospitalisations can be avoided. Individual studies indicate that community nursing can be cost-effective for certain patient groups (e.g., certain diseases or age groups). Some of the studies examined have considerable methodological limitations, so that the evidence on the cost-effectiveness is limited.

Discussion and conclusion: The use of community nursing tends not to be cost-effective in the identified literature, but methodological limitations may have biased the results. The transferability of the studies is limited, as most of these are older and from outside Europe. Further research using more recent methodological findings from research on complex interventions and evaluation of public health interventions is needed.