Technical and scale efficiency of traditional medicine hospitals and general hospitals in inner Mongolia, China

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to measure the technical and scale efficiency of 128 general hospitals and 69 traditional medicine hospitals and to estimate the possible factors influencing on the efficiency of both general hospitals and traditional hospitals in Inner Mongolia, China. In first part, Input-orientation Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was employed to compute technical efficiency and scale efficiency of both general hospital and traditional medicine hospital.In second part, ordinary least square (OLS) was used to determine the factors that affect the efficiency. The DEA analysis showed 86.7% of general hospitals and 66.7% of traditional medicine hospitals were run inefficiency in 2011.Both the two types of hospital, the average variable return to scale (VRS) technical efficiency scores were about50%and 60%, respectively. Thepattern of most general and traditional medicine hospitals scale inefficiency was increasing return to scale. The result of OLS revealed that other personal-physician ratio had a positive relationship with both types of hospital technical efficiency, bed physician ratio;number of doctor in the form of square had a positive relationship with the general hospital technical efficiency score, nurse physician ratio had a negative relationship with the general hospital technical efficiency score. However, all above three variables were insignificant for the traditional medicine hospital technical efficiency scores. Bed occupancy and geographic were insignificant for two types of hospitals’ technical efficiency. For scale efficiency scores, if outpatient visits-physician ratio increase, both two types of hospital scale efficiency were influenced positively, on the contrary, number of beds was found negatively significant. Average of bed day had a negative relationship with the efficiency and significant for the general hospital scale efficiency, but insignificant for the traditional medicine hospital. Traditional medicine hospital in other region were less scale efficient than in the city area.