Technical Efficiency of Physicians on a Provincial Basis in Turkey: An Application in Ministry of Health Hospitals

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the technical efficiency of the physicians working in the hospitals of the Turkish Ministry of Health of Turkey on a provincial basis. The other aim is to determine the idle inputs and under-produced outputs of the inefficient provinces. CCR and BCC models of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique were used as a method to determine the technical efficiency level of physicians. The Super-efficiency model was also used to rank the efficiency of the efficient provinces. The total number of surgical specialists, the total number of internal medicine specialists, and the total number of general practitioners were used as input variables, the total weighted number of surgeries, the total number of hospital admissions, and the total number of inpatients as output variables in this study. As a result of the analysis, 19 (23.5%) provinces were technically efficient according to the CCR model, while 28 (34.6%) provinces achieved to be technically efficient in the BCC model. The efficiency average of 81 provinces was calculated as 0.8647 in the CCR model and 0.9149 in the BCC model. As a consequence of the super-efficiency ranking of the 19 provinces that are efficient in the input-oriented CCR model, the three provinces with the highest efficiency scores were Istanbul, Ankara, and Kırıkkale, respectively. The super-efficiency score of the Istanbul Province was higher than the others, having a value above 1.7. It is a known fact that the number of physicians in Turkey is quite insufficient compared to developed countries. Therefore, instead of reducing the number of healthcare personnel in inefficient provinces, the number of healthcare personnel in efficient provinces should be increased.