Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Efficiency in health care
- 2 The components of an efficiency model
- 3 Stochastic frontier analysis of cross-sectional data
- 4 Stochastic frontier analysis of panel data
- 5 Data envelopment analysis
- 6 The Malmquist index
- 7 A comparison of SFA and DEA
- 8 Unresolved issues and challenges in efficiency measurement
- 9 Some alternative approaches to measuring performance
- 10 Conclusions
- Appendix: Data description
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
10 - Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Efficiency in health care
- 2 The components of an efficiency model
- 3 Stochastic frontier analysis of cross-sectional data
- 4 Stochastic frontier analysis of panel data
- 5 Data envelopment analysis
- 6 The Malmquist index
- 7 A comparison of SFA and DEA
- 8 Unresolved issues and challenges in efficiency measurement
- 9 Some alternative approaches to measuring performance
- 10 Conclusions
- Appendix: Data description
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
The pursuit of increased efficiency in the health care system is a major preoccupation of most developed countries. It is likely, if anything, to become more urgent as the pressures of technological innovation, an aging population and increased public expectations combine to drive up expenditure on health care still further. Moreover, it is clear that there is only limited scope for relying on conventional markets to deliver many aspects of health care. Therefore, some sort of regulatory mechanism is needed to ensure that providers are delivering health care in line with payer requirements, whether that payer is an individual patient, an insurance fund, a local government or the more general taxpayer. We would argue that quantitative analysis of the sort described in this book is an essential prerequisite of any proper regulation in the health care domain.
We have claimed that the ultimate aim of such analysis should be to assess the cost-effectiveness of a health care organisation, measured as the ratio of its valued outcomes to the resources it consumes. Few would argue with this goal in principle. Indeed, it is quite straightforward to estimate cost-effectiveness if certain conditions hold:
there is consensus on the goals of the organisation;
all outputs and inputs can be measured;
the outputs can be readily valued and combined into a single measure of effectiveness;
the organisation relies only on its own inputs to secure those outputs, and not on joint work with other organisations;
it is straightforward to account for any environmental difficulties the organisation experiences in securing its results.
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- Information
- Measuring Efficiency in Health CareAnalytic Techniques and Health Policy, pp. 207 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006