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- Title
Best-practice measures of resource utilization for hospitals: A useful complement in performance....
- Authors
Kerr, Christine A.; Glass, J. Colin; McCallion, Gillian M.; McKillop, Donal G.
- Abstract
The article examines the usefulness of data envelopment analysis measures within the hospital sector in Northern Ireland. Technical efficiency measures a hospital's performance relative to best practice within a sample. It questions whether a hospital could have produced its observed outputs using less of all its inputs or, produced proportionately more of all its outputs given its current deployment of inputs. Since the measure generates a quantitative estimate of the feasible expansion possible with the resources currently deployed, it provides a realistic target for improvement in efficiency within an individual hospital. It is precisely this ability to benchmark inefficiency in the use of resources that gives the measure contemporary relevance. In particular, since the amount of each input available for a particular hospital is fixed, the technical efficiency measure provides a short-term or resource-constrained measure of the comparative performance of a hospital. Capacity utilization addresses the important question of whether more flexible use of certain inputs could also improve performance.
- Subjects
NORTHERN Ireland; HOSPITALS; DATA envelopment analysis; MEDICAL care; HEALTH facilities; MULTIVARIATE analysis
- Publication
Public Administration, 1999, Vol 77, Issue 3, p639
- ISSN
0033-3298
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-9299.00172