OBJECTIVES: The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) in Germany evaluates benefits/harms and economic implications of medical interventions. For the purpose of cost-benefit analysis, IQWiG has developed the efficiency frontier concept to determine the maximum reimbursable price for pharmaceuticals. Within this concept benefits/harms are evaluated for each patient-relevant endpoint. If a compound shows additional/less benefit or less/more harm in several aspects of benefit, the creation of several efficiency frontiers would be required. The objective of this contribution was to assess whether the existence of multiple patient-relevant endpoints is a common feature within benefit assessments according to article 35a Social Code Book V which would entail multiple efficiency frontiers. METHODS: IQWiG's homepage was browsed for completed benefit assessments. Between January 2011 and May 2012, 21 benefit assessments were published by IQWiG. All assessments were screened in detail for information on patient-relevant endpoints and endpoint-specific benefit assessments. RESULTS: In 11 dossier assessments, benefit was endpoint-specifically assessed, whereas in 10 assessments, no endpoint-specific assessment was performed. Within the 11 dossier assessments, 19 subpopulations with endpoint-specific assessments were identified. For each subpopulation, between one and five endpoints were assessed by IQWiG. In total, 50 patient-relevant endpoints were detected. On average 2.63 patient-relevant endpoints per subpopulation were assessed. CONCLUSIONS: Since benefits/harms are evaluated for each patient-relevant endpoint the existence of multiple patient-relevant endpoints constitute a challenge for the compilation of the efficiency frontier and the subsequent determination of the maximum reimbursable price. Recommendations will likely be imprecise due to endpoint-specific benefits/harms. Prioritizing and weighting benefit and harm aspects can therefore not be avoided within IQWiG's proposed efficiency frontier concept if the decision maker requires precise recommendations for the maximum reimbursable price. Thus, an aggregation of benefit and harm parameters into one single efficiency frontier is needed.