• 1. School of Public Health and Management, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510006, P. R. China;
  • 2. National Institute of Hospital Administration, National Health Commission, Beijing 100044, P. R. China;
ZHOU Shangcheng, Email: whzsc2008@hotmail.com
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Objective  To explore the present situation of the efficiency about public tertiary general hospitals in Shandong province, measure and compare the efficiency and the state of returns to scale of hospitals under different bed scales. Methods  Based on the input and output data of 137 public tertiary general hospitals in Shandong province in 2017, two input indicators (the number of employees and the number of actual beds) and two output indicators (the total number of outpatients and emergent patients, and the number of discharges) were selected. The technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency of sample hospitals were calculated by using data envelopment analysis, and a comparative analysis was carried out under different bed scales. Results  Of the 137 public tertiary general hospitals, the mean of technical efficiency value was 0.666, the medians of pure technical efficiency value and scale efficiency value in 2017 were 0.817 and 0.919, respectively. In the 137 sample hospitals, there were 132 hospitals (96.4%) in ineffective status; there were 90 hospitals (65.7%) exhibiting increasing returns to scale, 11 hospitals (8.0%) exhibiting constant returns to scale, and 36 hospitals (26.3%) exhibiting decreasing returns to scale. There were significant differences in hospital efficiency and returns to scale under different bed sizes (P<0.001), and the scale efficiency was the highest when the bed size was 1001-2000. Conclusions  The overall operating efficiency of the public tertiary general hospitals in the province was not high yet. Most hospitals were in ineffective status and most of them were in the state of increasing returns to scale. The optimal scale of actual beds is between 1001 and 2000 beds from the perspective of scale efficiency.

Citation: ZHOU Zhihua, LI Meng, ZHOU Shangcheng. Operational efficiency and returns to scale in public tertiary general hospitals in Shandong province using data envelopment analysis approach. West China Medical Journal, 2021, 36(12): 1664-1668. doi: 10.7507/1002-0179.202011070 Copy

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