Use DEA model to study hospitals’ performance through medical quality

Abstract

We use data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods to assess the performance of Taiwan’s hospitals. The difference between this study and prior studies is that we use medical quality factors in estimating hospitals’ performance. The samples in this study come from the “The Survey of Public and Private Medical Care Organization in Taiwan” during 2001 to 2003 that was provided by the Statistics Division of the Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taiwan. DEA methods and Tobit regressions model were used in this study to discuss the factors affecting the hospitals’ performance. And then we use the Malmquist index to measure a change in productivity Some results are as follows: (1) The medical quality plays an important role in hospitals’ performance and productivity. (2) Military hospitals and public hospitals perform worse than private and proprietary hospitals. (3) Some factors, including the average inpatient day, the percentage of outpatients to inpatients, the quantity of high-priced medical devices, divisions, and the percentage of licensed personnel to nonlicensed personnel have a positive impact on performance. However, the factor of the number of departments has a negative impact on performance. These findings provide hospital managers an evaluation tool for improving hospital performance.