Do mergers enhance the performance of hospital efficiency?

J Harris, H Ozgen () and Y Ozcan ()
Additional contact information
J Harris: Virginia Commonwealth University
H Ozgen: Virginia Commonwealth University
Y Ozcan: Virginia Commonwealth University

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2000, vol. 51, issue 7, 801-811

Abstract: Abstract Due to the wave of mergers that have taken place in the USA, the early 1990s could be labelled as a restructuring era for health care systems. The question of whether mergers have an impact on organizational performance is still an area of interest for health services researchers. In this study, we examined the impacts of horizontal mergers of US hospital's technical efficiency before and after merger using longitudinal Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The findings of our study illustrate that mergers do increase a hospital's level of efficiency. Constant returns-to-scale model indicated an overall reduction in input utilisation after merger, compared to variable returns-to-scale model. This indicates the role of scale efficiency as a dominant source of improvement in inefficiency of hospitals involved in horizontal mergers, but not for technical efficiency. Suggestions for future study are provided.

Keywords: hospitals; mergers; data envelopment analysis; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2600869 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:51:y:2000:i:7:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2600869

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2600869

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().