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Health-Care Applications: From Hospitals to Physicians, from Productive Efficiency to Quality Frontiers

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Handbook on Data Envelopment Analysis

Part of the book series: International Series in Operations Research & Management Science ((ISOR,volume 164))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on health-care applications of DEA. The paper begins with a brief history of health applications and discusses some of the models and the motivation behind the applications. Using DEA to develop quality frontiers in health services is offered as a new and promising direction. The paper concludes with an eight-step application procedure and list of do’s and don’ts when applying DEA to health services.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The next section draws heavily on Chilingerian and Sherman (1995), Rosko (1990) and Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (1978).

  2. 2.

    Practice style, as it used here, refers to the treatment patterns defined by the specific mix of resource inputs used by a physician (or group of physicians) to care for a given mix of patients.

  3. 3.

    Although the two-input single output problem can be solved graphically, multi-input multi-output problems require a mathematical formulation that can only be solved by using a linear programming model.

  4. 4.

    In economics, holding constant all other inputs, the marginal product of an input is the addition to total output resulting from using the last unit of input. The ratio of the marginal products is the marginal rate of technical substitution, defined as −dx 2/dx 1.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Dianne Chilingerian and W.W. Cooper for their encouragement and thoughtful comments. Part of the material for this chapter was adapted from Chilingerian, J. A., 1995, Evaluating physician efficiency in hospitals: A multivariate analysis of best practices, European Journal of Operational Research 80, 548–574; Chilingerian, J.A. 2000, Evaluating quality outcomes against best practice: a new frontier. The Quality Imperative: Measurement and Management of Quality. Imperial College Press, London, England; and Chilingerian, J. A., and H. David Sherman, 1997, DEA and primary care physician report cards: Deriving preferred practice cones from managed care service concepts and operating strategies, Annals of Operations Research 73, 35–66.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University Waltham, Waltham, MA, 02254-9110, USA

    Jon A. Chilingerian

  2. College of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    H. David Sherman

Authors
  1. Jon A. Chilingerian
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  2. H. David Sherman
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Correspondence to H. David Sherman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. McCombs School of Business, Dept. Management Science &, University of Texas, Austin, University Station 1, Austin, 78712-0212, Texas, USA

    William W. Cooper

  2. Dept. Industrial and, Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, Beal Avenue 1205, Ann Arbor, 48109-2117, Michigan, USA

    Lawrence M. Seiford

  3. Dept. Management, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Institute Road 100, Worcester, 01609, Massachusetts, USA

    Joe Zhu

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Chilingerian, J.A., Sherman, H.D. (2011). Health-Care Applications: From Hospitals to Physicians, from Productive Efficiency to Quality Frontiers. In: Cooper, W., Seiford, L., Zhu, J. (eds) Handbook on Data Envelopment Analysis. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 164. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6151-8_16

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