Examination on level of scale efficiency in public hospitals in Tanzania

Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation

Eliaza Mkuna¹  Fatuma Fumbwe¹  Felician Andrew¹  Robert Lihawa¹  George Kinyanjui² 

[1]Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics, Mzumbe University, P.O Box 5, Morogoro, Tanzania

[2]Senior Researcher, University of Cape Town, Cape town, South Africa

关键词: Scale efficiency;    Public hospitals;    Data envelopment analysis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12962-021-00305-4

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

PurposeTanzania has implemented policies that aim at improving health sector performance as well as the general health status of citizens. Establishment of community insurance fund, increase government budget allocation in health sector, establishment of institutions for critical and special diseases like Tanzania Ocean road cancer institute, Muhimbili Orthopaedic Institute and many other that aim at improving sector efficiency. These efforts and policies had a direct impact on improving the health sector and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite these improvement efforts, the health sector continues to face enormous challenges. Among the major challenges identified is the level of inefficiencies in healthcare delivery. It is for this reason; this paper examines the scale efficiency level in Tanzania’s public hospitals.MethodsUsing data from the Ministry of Health, this paper employs the Input based Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to examine Tanzania’s public hospital efficiency levels. DEA has been applied because it can handle multiple inputs and output that can have different units simultaneously.ResultsFindings showed that the average scale efficiency was 78.6%.and 72.9%for regional and district hospitals respectively. Additionally, 43.8% of the regional referral hospitals attained the most productive scale size compared to 21.05% in district hospitals.ConclusionThe study concludes that there is dire need for the ministry of health to consider resource reallocation across public hospitals. Periodic re-estimation of efficiency levels coupled with increased health care input injection is of urgent need.

【 授权许可】

CC BY