Association between efficiency and quality of care of public healthcare facilities: Evidence from Pakistan

Saima Bashir, Muhammad Nasir, Katja Grasic, Marc Moulin and Shehzad Ali

International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2022, vol. 37, issue 4, 2240-2255

Abstract: Background Maternal and child health is an important component of the Sustainable Development Goals. Pakistan has one of the worst maternal and neonatal health outcomes in the world. This is despite significant health system investments across the country. Aims The objectives of this study are twofold. First, the study estimates the technical efficiency of the public healthcare facilities in Pakistan, defined as the number of obstetric deliveries compared to the number of medical specialists, nurses, and other health and non‐health staff members. Second, the study evaluates the relationship between efficiency and quality of care; the latter is measured in terms of maternal and neonatal mortality. Materials & Methods The data were taken from the Pakistan Health Facility Assessment Survey. Efficiency score was calculated for 843 public healthcare facilities, using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. We then used two‐stage residual inclusion approach with bootstrapping to evaluate the relationship between efficiency and quality. Results and Discussion The average efficiency score was 0.48 (range: 0–1) and none of the public healthcare facilities were on the frontier, implying that efficiency gains can be made across the board. The relationship between efficiency and quality is found to be positive and statistically significant, that is, more efficient healthcare facilities also had lower rates of maternal and neonatal mortality. Conclusion We conclude that more efficient public healthcare facilities also had lower mortality rates, probably due to better infrastructure and health system financing.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.3465

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:bla:ijhplm:v:37:y:2022:i:4:p:2240-2255

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0749-6753

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Health Planning and Management is currently edited by Calum Paton

More articles in International Journal of Health Planning and Management from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().