Technical efficiency in primary health care: does quality matter?

Luis R. Murillo-Zamorano and Carmelo Petraglia

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The accuracy required in the measurement of output is an issue that has as yet still not been satisfactorily addressed in empirical research on efficiency in primary health care. We exploit information retrieved from a newly constructed database (APEX06) for the Spanish region of Extremadura. The richness of our dataset allows us to consider original synthetic measures of output that take into account both the quantity and the quality of services provided by 85 primary care centres (PCCs) in 2006. We provide evidence that neglecting the issue of properly accounting for the quality of health services can lead to misleading results. Our main finding is that adjusting output for quality influences efficiency analysis in three senses. First, inefficiency now explains relatively more of the deviation from the potential output. Second, the average technical efficiency in the sector is lower, while its dispersion among PCCs is significantly higher. And third, the efficiency ranking of the PCCs is also affected.

Keywords: Primary Health Care; Stochastic Frontier Analysis; Technical Efficiency; Quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C10 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Technical efficiency in primary health care: does quality matter? (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:10725

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