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Measuring health indicators and allocating health resources: a DEA-based approach

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Abstract

This paper suggests new empirical DEA models for the measurement of health indicators and the allocation of health resources. The proposed models were developed by first suggesting a population-based health indicator. By introducing the suggested indicator into DEA models, a new approach that solves the problem of health resource allocation has been developed. The proposed models are applied to an empirical study of Taiwan’s health system. Empirical findings show that the suggested indicator can successfully accommodate the differences in health resource demands between populations, providing more reliable performance information than traditional indicators such as physician density. Using our models and a commonly used allocation mechanism, capitation, to allocate medical expenditures, it is found that the proposed model always obtains higher performance than those derived from capitation, and the superiority increases as allocated expenditures rise.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks two anonymous referees and editors of this journal for their valuable comments. Financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, under grant number MOST 103-2410-H-166-003, is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Marketing Management, Central Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No. 666, Pu-tzu Road, Taichung, 406, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Chih-Ching Yang

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  1. Chih-Ching Yang
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Correspondence to Chih-Ching Yang.

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Yang, CC. Measuring health indicators and allocating health resources: a DEA-based approach. Health Care Manag Sci 20, 365–378 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-016-9358-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-016-9358-2

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