Estimation of Technical Efficiency of General Hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Method in 2007

Background & Aims: Hospitals as the largest and most costly operational units in health care system have special importance. The rate of their efficiency can be used as a criterion for the measurement of performance and productivity of resource consumption in hospitals. The purpose of this study was to determine the technical efficiency of general hospitals of Kerman University of Medical Sciences. Methods: This study is a descriptive - analytic study in which the efficiency of general hospitals in Kerman University of Medical Sciences, including 13 teaching hospitals was determined by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Data and relevant Statistics were collected from statistics office of the University and Deap2.1 software was used to achieve the objectives of the research. Then the hypotheses of the research were studied by using SPSS software. Results: The average technical efficiency of studied hospitals in 2007 was 0.912, managerial efficiency was 0.993 and mean scale efficiency was 0.918. In regard to technical efficiency, 7 hospitals had the maximum technical efficiency (1), 4 hospitals had 0.8–1 efficiency and 2 hospitals had the technical efficiency of less than 0.8. Conclusion: In hospitals with technical efficiency of less than one, the optimal and initial values for staff differed and had personnel surplus. Therefore these hospitals should decrease their initial values for staff in order to achieve the expected optimal performance.