Activity-based funding reform and the performance of public hospitals: The case of Queensland, Australia

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of activity-based funding (ABF) on the performance of hospitals by exploiting a natural experiment that happened in the state of Queensland, Australia. To examine the outcome of the reform, the performance of hospitals is measured by the technical efficiency estimated from data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. We try to identify the causal effect of ABF on the technical efficiency of hospitals by incorporating difference-in-differences approach in the popular two-stage DEA framework. We find empirical evidence that ABF improves the technical efficiency of hospitals.