Technical efficiency and resources allocation in university hospitals in Tehran, 2009-2012

Background: Assessment of hospitals’ performance in achieving its goals is a basic necessity. Measuring the efficiency of hospitals in order to boost resource productivity in healthcare organizations is extremely important. The aim of this study was to measure technical efficiency and determining status of resource allocation in some university hospitals, in Tehran, Iran. Methods: This study was conducted in 2012; the research population consisted of all hospitals affiliated to Iran and Tehran medical sciences universities of. Required data, such as human and capital resources information and also production variables (hospital outputs) were collected from data centers of studied hospitals. Data were analyzed using data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, Deap2,1 software; and the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method, Frontier 4,1 software. Results: According to DEA method, average of technical, management (pure) and scale efficiency of the studied hospitals during the study period were calculated 0.87, 0.971, and 0.907, respectively. All kinds of efficiency did not follow a fixed trend over the study time and were constantly changing. In the stochastic frontier's production function analysis, the technical efficiency of the studied industry during the study period was estimated to be 0.389. Conclusion: This study represented hospitals with the highest and lowest efficiency. Reference hospitals (more efficient states) were indicated for the inefficient centers. According to the findings, it was found that in the hospitals that do not operate efficiently, there is a capacity to improve the technical efficiency by removing excess inputs without changes in the level of outputs. However, by the optimal allocation of resources in most studied hospitals, very important economy of scale can be achieved.