Efficiency analysis in public health organizations in Brazil

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss and collect evidence about the hypothesis that, under imperfect information, the multipurpose public organization emulates its peers, arguing that this hypothesis can be fruitful to the study of this kind of organization.Design/methodology/approach – At IPEC – Instituto de Pesquisa Clinica Evandro Chagas, the clinical research institute affiliated to FIOCRUZ – Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz, activities relating to infectious diseases –, e.g. diagnostic exams; outpatient care and patient admissions; teaching and research – are structured in the form of integrated action programs (briefly, PAIs). Taking into account the complexity of this organizational format, this paper applies a mathematical model allowing to define and compute managerial indicators referring to the eight main PAI programs with a view to measure their performance, to investigate whether there are any scale inefficiencies in the eight programs selected as decision‐making units (DMUs) and to assess the effective...