Data envelopment analysis for estimating efficiency of intensive care units: a case study in Iran
International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance
ISSN: 0952-6862
Article publication date: 14 May 2018
Abstract
Purpose
As hospitals are the most costly service providers in every healthcare systems, special attention should be given to their performance in terms of resource allocation and consumption. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate technical, allocative and economic efficiency in intensive care units (ICUs) of hospitals affiliated by Yazd University of Medical Sciences (YUMS) in 2015.
Design/methodology/approach
This was a descriptive, analytical study conducted in ICUs of seven training hospitals affiliated by YUMS using data envelopment analysis (DEA) in 2015. The number of physicians, nurses, active beds and equipment were regarded as input variables and bed occupancy rate, the number of discharged patients, economic information such as bed price and physicians’ fees were mentioned as output variables of the study. Available data from study variables were retrospectively gathered and analyzed through the Deap 2.1 software using the variable returns to scale methodology.
Findings
The study findings revealed the average scores of allocative, economic, technical, managerial and scale efficiency to be relatively 0.956, 0.866, 0.883, 0.89 and 0.913. Regarding to latter three types of efficiency, five hospitals had desirable performance.
Practical implications
Given that additional costs due to an extra number of manpower or unnecessary capital resources impose economic pressure on hospitals also the fact that reduction of surplus production plays a major role in reducing such expenditures in hospitals, it is suggested that departments with low efficiency reduce their input surpluses to achieve the optimal level of performance.
Originality/value
The authors applied a DEA approach to measure allocative, economic, technical, managerial and scale efficiency of under-study hospitals. This is a helpful linear programming method which acts as a powerful and understandable approach for comparative performance assessment in healthcare settings and a guidance for healthcare managers to improve their departments’ performance.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge hospital managers and personnel working in study hospitals who provided research data.
Citation
Bahrami, M.A., Rafiei, S., Abedi, M. and Askari, R. (2018), "Data envelopment analysis for estimating efficiency of intensive care units: a case study in Iran", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 276-282. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-12-2016-0181
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited