Efficiency analysis of Surgical services departments: Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper measures the overall, technical and scale efficiencies of public hospitals surgical services and explores strategies to improve efficiency. Composite Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models that accommodating ratio variables are developed to measure efficiencies, and offer improvement strategies. Results show that overstayed patients can be minimized by 9% and 6% for overall and technical efficiency to operate efficiently. Decreasing the scale of the surgical service department will not improve efficiency. In conclusion, the number of hospitalized-discharged patients showed to be the most contributing factor to efficiency for outputs, and patient turnover rate among the input. It is recommended that inpatient throughput be improved and patient overstay be minimized, also, the operational and personal management should be enhanced to utilize resources.