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Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis
The existence of geographic differences in health resources, health expenditures, the utilization of health services, and health outcomes have been documented by a lot of studies from various countries of the world. In a publicly financed health system, equal access is one of the main objectives of...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2018
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5835503/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29541631 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00053 |
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author | Dlouhý, Martin |
author_facet | Dlouhý, Martin |
author_sort | Dlouhý, Martin |
collection | PubMed |
description | The existence of geographic differences in health resources, health expenditures, the utilization of health services, and health outcomes have been documented by a lot of studies from various countries of the world. In a publicly financed health system, equal access is one of the main objectives of the national health policy. That is why inequalities in the geographic allocation of health resources are an important health policy issue. Measures of inequality express the complexity of variation in the observed variable by a single number, and there is a variety of inequality measures available. The objective of this study is to develop a measure of the geographic inequality in the case of multiple health resources. The measure uses data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is a non-parametric method of production function estimation, to transform multiple resources into a single virtual health resource. The study shows that the DEA originally developed for measuring efficiency can be used successfully to measure inequality. For the illustrative purpose, the inequality measure is calculated for the Czech Republic. The values of separate Robin Hood Indexes (RHIs) are 6.64% for physicians and 3.96% for nurses. In the next step, we use combined RHI for both health resources. Its value 5.06% takes into account that the combinations of two health resources serve regional populations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5835503 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58355032018-03-14 Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis Dlouhý, Martin Front Public Health Public Health The existence of geographic differences in health resources, health expenditures, the utilization of health services, and health outcomes have been documented by a lot of studies from various countries of the world. In a publicly financed health system, equal access is one of the main objectives of the national health policy. That is why inequalities in the geographic allocation of health resources are an important health policy issue. Measures of inequality express the complexity of variation in the observed variable by a single number, and there is a variety of inequality measures available. The objective of this study is to develop a measure of the geographic inequality in the case of multiple health resources. The measure uses data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is a non-parametric method of production function estimation, to transform multiple resources into a single virtual health resource. The study shows that the DEA originally developed for measuring efficiency can be used successfully to measure inequality. For the illustrative purpose, the inequality measure is calculated for the Czech Republic. The values of separate Robin Hood Indexes (RHIs) are 6.64% for physicians and 3.96% for nurses. In the next step, we use combined RHI for both health resources. Its value 5.06% takes into account that the combinations of two health resources serve regional populations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC5835503/ /pubmed/29541631 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00053 Text en Copyright © 2018 Dlouhý. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Public Health Dlouhý, Martin Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis |
title | Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis |
title_full | Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis |
title_fullStr | Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis |
title_full_unstemmed | Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis |
title_short | Measuring Geographic Inequalities: Dealing with Multiple Health Resources by Data Envelopment Analysis |
title_sort | measuring geographic inequalities: dealing with multiple health resources by data envelopment analysis |
topic | Public Health |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5835503/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29541631 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00053 |
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