Capacity inefficiencies of teaching and non-teaching hospitals

Abstract

This paper investigates capacity-based inefficiency causes and the existence of any differences between the improvement processes of teaching and non-teaching hospitals. In an effort to comparatively evaluate the inefficiency causes of hospitals in Turkey, this study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA can simultaneously assess the relationship between capacity (physical capacity and medical labor capacity) as inputs and the utilization of capacity (utilization of institution capacity for patients, utilization of physical capacity, and utilization of technological capacity) as outputs. In addition, the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) is used to analyze the patterns of efficiency change for the study years from 2001 to 2007. Several improvement suggestions have been provided to health care policy makers regarding inefficiency causes and ways of optimizing hospital efficiency.