IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibn/gjhsjl/v12y2020i3p121.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the Efficiency of Public Hospitals in Kuwait: A Two-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis and a Qualitative Survey Study

Author

Listed:
  • Abdullah M. Alsabah
  • Hassan Haghparast-Bidgoli
  • Jolene Skordis

Abstract

The recent drop in oil prices has challenged public sector financing in Kuwait. Technical and scale efficiency scores for fifteen public hospitals in Kuwait from 2010 to 2014 were estimated using a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA). Technical efficiency scores were regressed against institutional characteristics using Tobit regression to investigate the determinants of efficiency differences in hospitals. Semi-structured interviews were also carried out with fourteen public and private hospital managers to qualitatively explore their perceptions and experience about about factors affecting hospital efficiency. The mean technical efficiency score for all hospitals was 85.8%, an improvement of 2% since 2010. The mean pure technical efficiency score was 79.6%, improving from 75% in 2010 to 81.2% in 2014. The mean scale efficiency score was 91.8%, improving from 87.6% in 2010 to 94.2% in 2014. Only three hospitals were constantly technically and scale efficient. Tobit regression showed that hospital efficiency was significantly associated with the average length of patient stay. Hospitals with more than 400 beds were potentially more technically and scale efficient. The qualitative study revealed that external factors affecting efficiency commonly included implemention of legislative changes and decreasing bureaucracy, while internal factors included increasing bed capacity and improving qualifications and training of human resources. Most public hospitals in Kuwait were not technically and scale efficient, but improvements were observed. Potential factors that affected the efficiency of hospitals in Kuwait were identified. These findings are useful to decision-makers in Kuwait for developing strategies to improve public hospital efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Abdullah M. Alsabah & Hassan Haghparast-Bidgoli & Jolene Skordis, 2020. "Measuring the Efficiency of Public Hospitals in Kuwait: A Two-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis and a Qualitative Survey Study," Global Journal of Health Science, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(3), pages 121-121, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ibn:gjhsjl:v:12:y:2020:i:3:p:121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/gjhs/article/download/0/0/42109/43810
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/gjhs/article/view/0/42109
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. H. Brown & José Pagán, 2006. "Managed care and the scale efficiency of US hospitals," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 278-289, December.
    2. Lindlbauer, Ivonne & Schreyögg, Jonas & Winter, Vera, 2016. "Changes in technical efficiency after quality management certification: A DEA approach using difference-in-difference estimation with genetic matching in the hospital industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(3), pages 1026-1036.
    3. Eulália Dalmau-Atarrodona & Jaume Puig-Junoy, 1998. "Market Structure and Hospital Efficiency: Evaluating Potential Effects of Deregulation in a National Health Service," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 13(4), pages 447-466, August.
    4. Léopold Simar & Paul Wilson, 2011. "Two-stage DEA: caveat emptor," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 205-218, October.
    5. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    6. Howard Oxley & Maitland MacFarlan, 1994. "Health Care Reform Controlling Spending and Increasing Efficiency," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 149, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mustafa Jahangoshai Rezaee & Abuzar Karimdadi & Hamidreza Izadbakhsh, 2019. "Road map for progress and attractiveness of Iranian hospitals by integrating self-organizing map and context-dependent DEA," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 410-436, September.
    2. Yang, Guo-liang & Fukuyama, Hirofumi & Chen, Kun, 2019. "Investigating the regional sustainable performance of the Chinese real estate industry: A slack-based DEA approach," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 141-159.
    3. Sickles, Robin C. & Song, Wonho & Zelenyuk, Valentin, 2018. "Econometric Analysis of Productivity: Theory and Implementation in R," Working Papers 18-008, Rice University, Department of Economics.
    4. Guilhermina Rego & Rui Nunes & José Costa, 2010. "The challenge of corporatisation: the experience of Portuguese public hospitals," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 11(4), pages 367-381, August.
    5. Imran, Muhammad Ali & Ali, Asghar & Ashfaq, Muhammad & Hassan, Sarfraz & Culas, Richard & Ma, Chunbo, 2019. "Impact of climate smart agriculture (CSA) through sustainable irrigation management on Resource use efficiency: A sustainable production alternative for cotton," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2019. "Combining the Virtues of Stochastic Frontier and Data Envelopment Analysis," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 1628-1658, November.
    7. Yauheniya Varabyova & Jonas Schreyögg, 2018. "Integrating quality into the nonparametric analysis of efficiency: a simulation comparison of popular methods," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 261(1), pages 365-392, February.
    8. O'Neill, Liam & Rauner, Marion & Heidenberger, Kurt & Kraus, Markus, 2008. "A cross-national comparison and taxonomy of DEA-based hospital efficiency studies," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 158-189, September.
    9. Guangshun Qiao & Zhan-ao Wang, 2021. "Vertical integration vs. specialization: a nonparametric conditional efficiency estimate for the global semiconductor industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 139-150, December.
    10. Claudio Detotto & Manuela Pulina & Juan Brida, 2014. "Assessing the productivity of the Italian hospitality sector: a post-WDEA pooled-truncated and spatial analysis," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 103-121, October.
    11. Kosycarz, Ewa & Dędys, Monika & Ekes, Maria & Wranik, Wiesława Dominika, 2023. "The effects of provider contract types and fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of the Polish hospital sector: A data envelopment analysis across 16 health regions," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Cordero Ferrera, Jose Manuel & Alonso Morán, Edurne & Nuño Solís, Roberto & Orueta, Juan F. & Souto Arce, Regina, 2013. "Efficiency assessment of primary care providers: A conditional nonparametric approach," MPRA Paper 51926, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2011. "A conditional full frontier modelling for analyzing environmental efficiency and economic growth," MPRA Paper 32839, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Titl, Vitezslav & De Witte, Kristof, 2022. "How politics influence public good provision," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    15. Ram Pratap Sinha, 2021. "Indebtedness, Fiscal Discipline and Development Spending – A Non-parametric Approach," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 13(2), pages 147-173, June.
    16. Kostas Kounetas & Fotis Papathanassopoulos, 2013. "How efficient are Greek hospitals? A case study using a double bootstrap DEA approach," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(6), pages 979-994, December.
    17. Tsionas, Mike G., 2023. "Combining data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontiers via a LASSO prior," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 1158-1166.
    18. Wen-Min Lu & Qian Long Kweh & Kai-Chu Yang, 2022. "Multiplicative efficiency aggregation to evaluate Taiwanese local auditing institutions performance," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 315(2), pages 1243-1262, August.
    19. Roberto Cellini & Giacomo Pignataro & Ilde Rizzo, 2000. "Competition and Efficiency in Health Care: An Analysis of the Italian Case," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 7(4), pages 503-519, August.
    20. Yuki Kuwahara & Satoko Nagata & Atsuko Taguchi & Takashi Naruse & Hiroyuki Kawaguchi & Sachiyo Murashima, 2013. "Measuring the efficiencies of visiting nurse service agencies using data envelopment analysis," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 228-235, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ibn:gjhsjl:v:12:y:2020:i:3:p:121. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Canadian Center of Science and Education (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.