Abstract:
This study aimed to measure the technical efficiency of 31 direct and 57 indirect insurance public primary health centers in Gezira State of Sudan and to identify the possible factors affecting their technical inefficiency. In the first stage, an input orientated data envelopment analysis was adopted to compute the technical efficiency scores for both types of health centers. In the second stage Tobit model was used to determine the factors that affect technical inefficiency of the health centers.
The study revealed that the average technical efficiency score of both direct and indirect health centers was 77%. The results also showed that 45.4% of direct and 43.9% of indirect health centers were run inefficiently. From the results of Tobit regression, being direct health center, large size and large center in urban were found to be significant and negatively affecting the technical inefficiency. Being in urban, high ratio of medical to non-medical staff, the size in form of square and the time dummy variable for year 2012 significantly increased the technical inefficiency of the health center.
