Efficiency Evaluation of University Hospitals In Bushehr Province before and after the Implementation of the Health System Development Plan

Background: High hospital costs on one hand, and limited resources and facilities on the other hand, have led hospital managers to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Performance measurement is one of methods for assessing efficiency of hospital .in terms of resource utilization. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of evaluating the efficiency of hospitals affiliated with Bushehr University of Medical Sciences before and after the implementation of the Health development Plan. Methods: This study is descriptive-analytic. The research population of this study was all hospitals affiliated with Bushehr University of Medical Sciences whose performance was evaluated in two years of 2013 and 2014. To measure the efficiency of these hospitals, data frontier analysis was used. The criteria of the total number of employees, the total number of physicians, the number of nurses and active beds were studied as input variables, and the percentages of cesarean section in total deliveries, number of surgeries, average residence. The data were collected in collaboration with the University s Center of Statistics as well as referring to the hospitals and analyzed using DEA software. Results: The mean technical efficiency, managerial and scale of performance before the implementation of health system development plan were reported 0.934 ± 0.116, 1.00 ± 0.0 and 0.934 ± 0.116, respectively. Furthermore, six out of the eight hospitals studied were technically and scale-oriented efficient, and all eight hospitals were efficient regarding management. Only two hospitals had a surplus and two hospitals were inadequate. The mean efficiency after the implementation of the development plan was 0.9504 ± 0.131, 0.977 ± 0.059 and 0.966 ± 0.088, respectively. Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, the health system development plan has had a positive effect on the efficiency of hospitals, Although the efficiency of hospitals is desirable, it is essential that managers and policymakers of the health sector take measures to improve the efficacy and increase the use of resources.