Managing productivity of public health insurance services

In recent years, considerable emphasis has been given to the determination of the efficiency of public organisations and public service units using the data envelopment analysis method (DEA), which evaluates the relative efficiency of the units under examination. The ability to model both quantitative and qualitative factors in its structure extends the usefulness of the method. Moreover since DEA was initially developed as an efficient measurement tool for non-for-profit situation and since such situations commonly exhibit 'soft factors', the capability to handle such factors becomes a necessity in the field of healthcare system. In this study, we assess the efficiency of the primary healthcare units of the principal Greek public insurance provider the Social Security Institute (IKA).