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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Hospitals are complex bodies which produce multiple outputs through the utilisation of multiple inputs (Fare et al., 1994). Besides complexity, many relevant issues are raised in regard to its operation, and efficiency is one of them. It is estimated that half of the resources assigned to the health sector are allocated to hospitals operations.
In Portugal, reforms in the public sector have started in the decade of 90’s of the last century and great efforts have been made to fight back the excessive expenditure in the health sector. Under this movement, some experiences in hospital management have been carried out, in particular, the privatisation of the management system of 34 hospitals of the Portuguese National Health System by converting them into 31 corporations running the hospital business. The study we have conducted concerns the economic efficiency of hospitals and our analysis is based on the concept of the efficiency frontier (Farrell, 1957). For achieving this objective we have explored two possible methodologies, the parametric approach which is the econometric one, and the non-parametric approach, the data envelopment analysis. As main conclusions of our research, the newly established hospital corporations helped to improve the efficiency frontier of the entire hospital industry, notwithstanding public hospitals could show higher technical efficiency scores than those that were transformed into corporations.
Description
Working Paper com arbitragem científica
Keywords
Hospital efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) New public management
Citation
Publisher
ISCAL - Lisbon Accounting and Business School, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa