ArticleBMJ open2015
Technical efficiency and productivity of Chinese county hospitals: an exploratory study in Henan province, China.
Article in BMJ open, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Approach in inputs & outputs selection of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) efficiency measurement in hospitals: A systematic review.PloS one · 2024Pooled it
- Integrated Analysis of Healthcare Efficiency: A Systematic Review.Journal of medical systems · 2017Pooled it
- Technical efficiency of sub-district level hospitals in Bangladesh: a comparative frontier analysis.Health economics review · 2026Article
- Efficiency assessment of gynecological resource allocation in tertiary hospitals: a Data Envelopment Analysis approach.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Patient safety culture across hospital tiers in China: a cross-sectional survey of healthcare professionals.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- The efficiency of secondary-level hospitals in hard-to-reach and non-hard-to-reach areas in Bangladesh: a data envelopment analysis approach.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Study on regional disparities and influencing factors of public health service supply in China from the perspective of fairness.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Performance of Greek Public Hospitals Before and After the Economic Recession and the Pandemic: Application of a Novel Cost Malmquist Index for Comparing Productivity Across Multiple Groups.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Impact of pilot public hospital reform on efficiencies: a DEA analysis of county hospitals in East China, 2009-2015.Health economics review · 2025Article
- Investigating the efficiency of medical and health resources and its influencing factors in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations: based on the undesirable super-efficiency SBM-Malmquist-Tobit model.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Efficiency of the healthcare system and the impact of smoking bans: a DEA analysis of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area in Asia.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Resource allocation efficiency in 68 county-level traditional Chinese medicine hospitals in China: a data envelopment analysis.BMJ open · 2024Article
- DRGKB: a knowledgebase of worldwide diagnosis-related groups' practices for comparison, evaluation and knowledge-guided application.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2024Article
- The heterogeneous impacts of government on health system efficiency in China's new health reform, 2010-2019.International health · 2024Article
- Level of technical efficiency and associated factors among health centers in East Gojjam Zone, Northwest Ethiopia: an application of the data envelopment analysis.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Observational
- Healthcare reform and productivity of Hospital: a DEA-based analysis from South West of Iran.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2023Article
- Article
- Assessing the Efficiency and Productivity of the Hospital Clinics on the Island of Rhodes during the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Analysis of factors influencing technical efficiency of public district hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa.Human resources for health · 2022Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
objectivesChinese county hospitals have been excessively enlarging their scale during the healthcare reform since 2009. The purpose of this paper is to examine the technical efficiency and productivity of county hospitals during the reform process, and to determine whether, and how, efficiency is affected by various factors. SETTING AND
participants114 sample county hospitals were selected from Henan province, China, from 2010 to 2012. OUTCOME MEASURES: Data envelopment analysis was employed to estimate the technical and scale efficiency of sample hospitals. The Malmquist index was used to calculate productivity changes over time. Tobit regression was used to regress against 4 environmental factors and 5 institutional factors that affected the technical efficiency.
results(1) 112 (98.2%), 112 (98.2%) and 104 (91.2%) of the 114 sample hospitals ran inefficiently in 2010, 2011 and 2012, with average technical efficiency of 0.697, 0.748 and 0.790, respectively. (2) On average, during 2010-2012, productivity of sample county hospitals increased by 7.8%, which was produced by the progress in technical efficiency changes and technological changes of 0.9% and 6.8%, respectively. (3) Tobit regression analysis indicated that government subsidy, hospital size with above 618 beds and average length of stay assumed a negative sign with technical efficiency; bed occupancy rate, ratio of beds to nurses and ratio of nurses to physicians assumed a positive sign with technical efficiency.
conclusionsThere was considerable space for technical efficiency improvement in Henan county hospitals. During 2010-2012, sample hospitals experienced productivity progress; however, the adverse change in pure technical efficiency should be emphasised. Moreover, according to the Tobit results, policy interventions that strictly supervise hospital bed scale, shorten the average length of stay and coordinate the proportion among physicians, nurses and beds, would benefit hospital efficiency.
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