Performance assessment of health examination for freshmen

Purpose – A health examination is one of important events for freshmen when they enter a university. Consequently, the quality and time required for the examination are components in any index measuring the service performance of a university. However, performance measure for the health examination with a performance index is comparatively seldom. This paper aims to provide an index to measure health examination performance for freshmen. Design/methodology/approach – A health examination performance index (HEPI) is defined for a university’s health examination procedure. To make accurate use of the HEPI in assessing health examination performance, this paper constructs a uniformly minimum variance unbiased (UMVU) estimator of the HEPI using an exponential distribution to develop a hypothesis testing procedure. Findings – Since health examination time exhibits the smaller-the-better type quality characteristic of time orientation, the HEPI is appropriate for evaluating the hospital’s performance in providing freshmen health examinations. This study also investigates the relationship between the HEPI and the non-conformance rate of health examination performance, and tabulates the non-conformance rate under the exponential distribution. Originality/value – The proposed testing procedure is easily applied and can accurately evaluate whether the true health examination performance for a hospital meets a university’s requirement. It can also be used to select a qualified outsourcing hospital and improve the service provided by the school.