The efficiency of provincial government health care expenditure after China’s new health care reform

Abstract

ABSTRACT By drawing on the panel data of health care inputs and outputs from 31China’s provinces in the period 2004–2020, we apply the Malmquist DEA model to measure the TFP, TC (Technology change), EC (Efficiency change), PEC (Pure efficiency change or pure technical efficiency change) and SEC (Scale efficiency change) of the provincialgovernment’s health care expenditure. We find that the average TFP of China’s 31 provincial health care expenditure was lower than 1. We note this applies irrespective of the implementation of NHCR (New Health Care Reform), and also observe the average TFP was much higher after NHCR was implemented.