Examination of Efficiency Change of Provincial Hospitals in Azerbaijan with Malmquist Index

Abstract

The level of development in health is an important criterion for countries. In a study aimed at measuring the performance of the health system in Azerbaijan on a provincial basis, the change in health efficiency of 56 cities between 2015-2019 was analyzed with the Malmquist Total Factor Productivity Index (MPI). As an input variable, the number of hospital beds, the number of health workers and the number of physicians were used in the provinces. The values used in input variables are figures per 10,000 people. As an output variable, the number of deaths of infants (under 1 year old), the number of deaths and the number of outpatient clinics were determined. The values used in the output variables are figures per 1000 people. The average MPI scores of the provinces covered by the study were 0.998 in 2015-2016, 1.002 in 2016-2017, 1.036 in 2017-2018 and 1.027 in 2018-2019. Out of the sample cluster of 56 provinces, Total Factor Productivity (TFP) increased in 36 (64.29%), remained constant in 1 (1.79%) and decreased in 19 (33.93%). Furthermore, TFP values were highest in Qazakh (20.6%), Aghdam (12,7) and Dashkesen (12,2). As a result of the study, it was found that there was an increase in productivity levels during the time period when the health performance of the provinces in Azerbaijan was evaluated. For this reason, it is proposed to develop actions and policies aimed at improving performance in low-productivity provinces and to allocate resources taking into account social needs.

Assessing the Efficiency and Productivity of the Hospital Clinics on the Island of Rhodes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Our results are in accordance with the international literature. There are numerous studies reporting that the processes related to the organization and management of health resources, the infrastructure, the availability, and use of innovative technologies, as well as patient management and staff training affect productivity changes [ 51 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ]. Several studies have stated that productivity deficits are mostly due to the losses in operational capacity, limited planning ability, insufficient staff availability, and longer procedure implementation times [ 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ].…”

“…Furthermore, the number of beds plays a significant role in the management of the pandemic along with the reallocation of patients and, subsequently the reallocation of beds [ 74 ]. Many authors also emphasize the effect of both clinic size and the number of nursing staff on both the technical efficiency and performance [ 65 , 66 , 68 , 71 ]. Another common finding is reported in a recent study conducted in Portugal during the pandemic showing that hospitals’ performance also dropped in 2020, while in 2021, better results were achieved [ 75 ].…”

Performance Evaluation of Public Hospitals with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Method

“…There are many studies evaluating hospital efficiency using the DEA method (Aletras et al, 2007;Magnussen and Nylan, 2008;Kounetas and Papathanassopoulos, 2013;Chowdhury et al, 2014;Kang and Kaipornsak, 2014;Cheng et al, 2015;Gholami et al, 2015;Li and Dong, 2015;Narcı, 2015;Rezaee and Karimdadi, 2015;Kutlar and Salamov, 2016a;Jiang et al, 2016;Kutlar and Salamov, 2016b;Campanella et al, 2017;Hsiao et al, 2018;Gandhi and Sharma, 2018;Miguel et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2019;Saquetto and Araujo, 2019;Yang et al, 2020;Yeşilyurt and Selamzade, 2021;Yazıcı and Biçen, 2021;Selamzade and Yüksel, 2021;İlgün et al, 2022).…”

Impact of tourism revenues and inflation on economic growth: An empirical study on GUAM countries

“…As a result, the role of tourism in a country's economy can be assessed in relation to economic activity, the national currency, and the country's position in the world market. In general, tourism's share of the balance of payments plays an important role in shifting from a negative to a positive balance (Selamzade, 2020).…”