Efficiency and Productivity of Public Hospitals in Serbia Using DEA-Malmquist Model and Tobit Regression Model, 2015–2019

Aleksandar Medarević and Dejana Vuković
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Aleksandar Medarević: Institute of Public Health of Serbia, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Dejana Vuković: Centre-School of Public Health and Health Management, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-22

Abstract: Improving productivity within health systems using limited resources is a matter of great concern. The objectives of the paper were to evaluate the productivity, efficiency, and impact of environmental factors on efficiency in Serbian hospitals from 2015–2019. Data envelopment analysis, Malmquist index and Tobit regression were applied to hospital data from this period, and public hospitals in Serbia exhibited a great variation regarding their capacity and performance. Between five and eight hospitals ran efficiently from 2015 to 2019, and the productivity of public hospitals increased whereas technical efficiency decreased in the same period. Tobit regression indicated that the proportion of elderly patients and small hospital size (below 200 beds) had a negative correlation with technical efficiency, while large hospital size (between 400 and 600 beds), the ratio of outpatient episodes to inpatient days, bed turnover rate and the bed occupation rate had a positive correlation with technical efficiency. Serbian public hospitals have considerable space for technical efficiency improvement and public action must be taken to improve resource utilization.

Keywords: data envelopment analysis; panel data analysis; benchmarking; technical efficiency; scale efficiency; environmental factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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