Benchmarking hospitals through a web based platform

Abstract

Purpose – In a context of international economic crisis the improvement in the efficiency and productivity of public services is seen as a way to maintain high-quality levels at lower costs. Increased productivity can be promoted through benchmarking exercises, where key performance indicators (KPIs), individually or aggregated, are used to compare health units. The purpose of this paper is to describe a benchmarking platform, called Hospital Benchmarking (HOBE), where hospital’s services are used as the unit of analysis. Design/methodology/approach – HOBE platform includes a set of managerial indicators through which hospital services’ are compared. The platform also benchmarks services through aggregate service indicators, and provides an aggregate measure of hospital’s performance based on a composite indicator of the service’s performances. These aggregate indicators were obtained through data envelopment analysis (DEA). Findings – Some results are presented for Portuguese hospitals for the trial years of 2008 and 2009, for which data is publicly available. Details for the service-level analysis are provided for a sample hospital, as well as details on the aggregate performance resulting from services performances. Practical implications – HOBE’s features and outcomes show that the platform can be used to guide management actions and to support the design of health policies by administrative authorities, provided that good quality and timely data are available, and that hospitals are involved in the design of the KPIs. Originality/value – The platform is innovative in the sense that it bases its analysis on hospital’s services, which are in general more comparable among hospitals than indicators of hospital overall performance. In addition, it makes use of DEA to aggregate performance indicators, allowing for user choice in the inputs and outputs to be aggregated, and it proposes a novel model to aggregate service’s efficiencies into a single measure of hospital performance.

Are the Portuguese public hospitals sustainable? A triple bottom line hybrid data envelopment analysis approach

“…(2016) on public health, for example. The focus on healthcare is more recent if we consider the applications in primary (Ferreira et al., 2013) and secondary healthcare (Simões and Marques, 2011; Marques and Carvalho, 2013; Portela et al., 2016).…”

Financial Performance and Profile of Brazilian Hospitals

“…Therefore, larger samples should be collected to support the conclusions herein drawn. Further studies, following Dong (2015) and Portela et al (2016), should also explore which health procedures and/or treatments can contribute the most to the financial efficiency of hospitals providing health services to the Brazilian public health system. In addition, further studies should also assess financial performance based on the hospitals’ cash flow (see Burkhardt & Wheeler, 2013; Coyne & Singh, 2018) and sources of payment.…”

“…International studies have analysed the relationship between financial performance and organisational profile. They have used different variables-including the hospitals' type (e.g., public, for-profit or not-for-profit) (Ramamonjiarivelo et al, 2018), context (e.g., emergency hospital, specialised hospital or university hospital) (Patidar et al, 2016), sources of payment (e.g., health insurers or engagement of the private sector by public managers; Portela et al, 2016) and profitability-to stratify the hospitals' levels of activities (Chitnis & Mishra, 2019). Such studies have measured financial performance in absolute numbers, but an alternative is the use of indicators (Penman, 1998).…”

Health care quality in nonparametric efficiency studies: a review

“…• SubCAT 12 studies use separate models for efficiency and quality. This approach understands efficiency and quality as distinct performance dimensions, resulting in an efficiency (also called managerial) model and an effectiveness (also called clinical) model (see, e.g., Portela et al 2016). • SubCAT 13 covers effectiveness studies that only incorporate quality outputs.…”