assessing hospital performance by the pabon lasso model

background: the pabon lasso model was  applied to assess the performance of six state-run hospitals in the province of kohgilooyeh & boyer-ahmad, to produce information that used by policy makers in their attempt to make the health care sys­tem more productive. methods: this cross-sectional study involved all the six public hospitals in the province, with 607 registered beds. data collec­tion accomplished by the use of two ad hoc questionnaires that dealt with both general information and admission data from various hospital wards. the statistical software spss-13 used to derive three basic performance indicators, namely aver­age length of stay, bed occupancy rate and bed turnover, which analyzed in pabon lasso model. results: the overall average length of stay, bed occupancy and bed turnover rates were 2.99 days, 62.78% and 76.73 respec­tively. two hospitals were in zone iii of the model, indicating a satisfactory level of efficiency. three hospitals demon­strated inefficiency and underutilization of resources by falling into zone i. one hospital placed in zone iv. conclusion: the best approach to address the existing inefficiencies would lie in stopping the expansion of the current facili­ties (e.g. not adding any more beds). as any further expansion will only serve to make hospitals more inefficient. fu­ture research should focus on why the performance is not at a desirable level and how the situation can be improved.