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Operating efficiency in inpatient care: An exploratory analysis of teaching hospitals in Rajasthan, India
Author(s) -
Purohit Brijesh C.,
Rai Vandana
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
the international journal of health planning and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-1751
pISSN - 0749-6753
DOI - 10.1002/hpm.4740070206
Subject(s) - salary , ranking (information retrieval) , staffing , productivity , unit (ring theory) , operations management , variable cost , data envelopment analysis , health care , business , fixed cost , indirect costs , index (typography) , medicine , nursing , accounting , economics , computer science , statistics , psychology , mathematics education , mathematics , machine learning , world wide web , market economy , macroeconomics , economic growth
Abstract This article reports on the results of an exploratory attempt towards the measurement of operational efficiency within hospitals. This microanalysis focuses attention on the departments of general surgery within four teaching hospitals in the State of Rajasthan in India. The analysis involves devising a costliness index, which then permits a ranking of hospitals according to their relative efficiencies. It is observed, generally, that all the study hospitals exceed their normative cost estimates on inpatient care. This is especially the case for two of the four hospitals, in respect of both fixed and variable costs. In the case of higher fixed costs, the cause seems to be a misallocation of resources resulting from high staffing levels, i.e. on the salaries of teaching or nursing staff. The variable costs are higher either on account of the high expenditure on supplies or on salary costs of common services. A further analysis was conducted to determine the presence or otherwise of inter‐unit efficiencies within the departments of general surgery, it revealed that inter‐unit differentials were mostly insignificant. More significantly, the study does suggest that expenditure efficiency on public health‐care in the hospitals studied could be enhanced through better budgetary management and cost control. This could be achieved, for instance, by enhancing the productivity of (human) resources, by checking wastages and leakages by means of appropriate monitoring, and through adoption as well as experimentation with methods of peer review and quality assurance.