A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF HOSPITAL INPUTS AND OUTPUTS IN MEASURING TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT There are many studies on technical efficiency conducted on various firms including hospitals in line with the demand to consume resources efficiently. In measuring technical efficiency of a hospital, there are many methods  that can be applied and Data Envelopment Analysis is one of them. Even though Data Envelopment Analysis is widely used by the researchers, this method has its limitations. One of the limitations is that it is very model specific and the results may be influenced by the inputs and outputs selection. Hence, it is very important to identify the right hospitals’ inputs and outputs that are commonly used in measuring hospital’s technical efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis to ensure accuracy of the results. Therefore, this study is aimed to identify the hospitals’ inputs and outputs commonly used in measuring hospital technical efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis. Two databases, namely Pubmed and CINAHL were used for searching articles between 2007 to 2017. The search were based on the inclusion criteria and the search terms including hospitals’ inputs, hospitals’ outputs, hospitals’ technical efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis and DEA were used. Twenty-four studies were reviewed and assessed in the final stage. In conclusion, the inputs that were commonly considered by researchers in analysing hospital technical efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis include the number of doctors, number of nurses and number of beds. Other inputs include the number of other medical staffs, number of other non-medical staffs, number of total employed staffs, total expenditure, total non-labour cost, value of fixed capital and cost of drug supply. However, the hospitals’ outputs that were commonly considered by researchers in analysing hospital technical efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis include the total inpatients, average daily admission, number of outpatients, number of surgeries, number of deliveries, the average length of stay, bed occupancy rate and total revenue. Even though this study has identified the commonly used inputs and outputs in measuring hospitals’ technical efficiency using Data Envelopment Analysis which can be used in conducting future research, the selection of inputs and outputs  should take into account the objectives of the hospital itself. Keywords: Hospital’s inputs, hospital’s output, technical efficiency, data envelopment analysis, DEA