Evaluating the Performance of Service Quality in the Hospitals of Traditional Chinese Medicine with Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

After the practice of National Health Insurance, medicine industry has been fiercely changed in Taiwan. With the introduction of national health insura nce, the citizens do no t worry about medical expenses, individual financial risks are reduc ed and the development of medicine industry is accelerated to enhance the convenience of the citizens seeing a doctor. Nevertheless, the medical expenditure is rapid ly increasing, the number of times the public seeing a doctor continu ously soars to a new height, and the development between fundamental clinics and hospitals becomes seriously unbalanced. As a result, the h ealth insurance payment policies are constantly adjusted and changed and the operation of h ospitals of traditional Chinese medicine are encountering severe challenges. This study therefore tends to explo re the business performance of traditional Chi nese medicine industry. The research results would provide specific suggestions for improving the management of traditional Chinese medicine industry. Accord- ing to the qualified hos pitals of traditional Ch inese medicine and the hospitals with the dep artment of traditional Chinese medicine in 2 011, total 17 DMUs are proceeded Delphi Method and Data Envelopment Analysis. The research results present that one DMU (Decision Making Units) appears strong-form efficien cy=1 on the quality of service, about 6% of all DMUs, showing the better efficiency of the q uality of service; 6 DMUs reveal the marginal inefficiency of the quali ty of service between 0.9 and 1, about 35% of all DMUs, showing the knowledge outsourcing efficiency being easily e nhanced; and, 10 DMUs present the knowledge outsourcing inefficiency lower than 0.9, about 59% of all DMUs.