AN EMPIRICAL SURVEY OF FRONTIER EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES IN HEALTHCARE SERVICES

Abstract

Healthcare institutions worldwide are increasingly the subject of analyses aimed at defining, measuring and improving organisational efficiency. However, despite the importance of efficiency measurement in healthcare services, it is only relatively recently that the more advanced econometric and mathematical frontier techniques have been applied to hospitals, nursing homes, health management organisations and physician practices. This paper attempts to provide a synoptic survey of the comparatively few empirical analyses of frontier efficiency measurement in healthcare services. Both the measurement of inefficiency in healthcare services and the determinants of healthcare efficiency are examined.data envelopment analysis; stochastic frontiers; technical, allocative and productive efficiency