DEA APPLIED TO A GAUTENG SAMPLE OF PUBLIC HOSPITALS¹

Abstract

The research presented in this paper provides an analysis of the delivery of a few health care services by the public sector in Gauteng, South Africa. The data for the study was especially difficult to collect, suggesting the need for hospital level data information systems, as well as staff who are trained to analyze the information collected. The empirical results from the analysis suggest that services provided by small-scale medical facilities waste fewer resources, while medical centres offering more technical services, such as surgeries, also appear to deliver medical services more efficiently. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation (c) Economic Society of South Africa 2007.

Stochastic Frontier Analysis of Specialist Surgeon Clinics

“…In contrast to the analysis in Kibambe and Koch (2007), the inclusion of additional controls does not have much impact on estimated average efficiency by product 8 . However, the inclusion of those controls, which are significant for total patient inefficiency and new patient inefficiency, does impact the point estimates of returns to scale.…”

“…(2000, 2001), Zere et al . (2001) and Kibambe and Koch (2007) have found that healthcare production in the South African public sector is rather inefficient. The results presented above suggest that the healthcare production in the South African private sector is also inefficient, and that surgical production, at least in the private sector, when compared to the previously referenced studies on public sector healthcare production, is generally less efficient than general healthcare production in the public sector 15…”

“…(2001) find that efficiency ranges from 68% to 74% in their sample of public hospitals. Kibambe and Koch (2007) find a much wider range of efficiency scores, due to the assumptions applied, some of which are flexible enough to result in efficiency scores that are higher, on average, than the aforementioned studies in Kenya and Zambia.…”

Efficiency and optimal size of hospitals: Results of a systematic search

“…Finally, Kibambe and Koch [22] found that services provided by small-scale medical facilities waste fewer resources and are more efficient in terms of costs compared with medical centres that offering more technical services.…”

The Effect of Access to Improved Water Sources and Sanitation on Economic Efficiency: The Case of Sub‐saharan African Countries

“…Later, Banker et al (1984) introduced a DEA estimator allowing for variable returns to scale (VRS) model. Since then, DEA methodology has been applied in different context calculating technical efficiency of different decision making units (Zere et al, 2001;Kibambe and Koch 2007). Our paper applies DEA input oriented models as the decision maker through different governmental policies can have greater control over the inputs compared with the outputs used (Halkos and Tzeremes, 2010b).…”