EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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2041. A new classification of data envelopment analysis applications in hospitals.

Invited abstract in session MB-17: DEA in healthcare, stream OR in Health Services (ORAHS).

Monday, 10:30-12:00
Room: 40 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Frederic Vanswijgenhoven
University of Ghent
2. Brecht Cardoen
Vlerick Business School
3. Paul Gemmel
Marketing, innovation and Organization, Ghent University

Abstract

Healthcare providers are continuously striving to organize care and cure more efficiently while maximizing outcomes for the patient. Benchmarking is seen as an important instrument to improve processes and the organization of care on the level of hospitals and processes within these hospitals. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) shows to be a successful method to facilitate such benchmarking, thanks to its ability to combine inputs and outputs into a single efficiency score. However, the method might not have been used to its full advantage given recent evolutions in the healthcare landscape. By means of a systematic literature review, including 498 articles for the period 1980 till now, we developed a classification system to position DEA benchmarks. Only a very small number of studies can be classified as DEA applications aimed at investigating process flows within and between hospitals, compared to a more traditional static or silo-oriented approach. This opens a future research agenda to investigate efficiency when care processes extend beyond multiple units within a hospital, or even across multiple hospitals which we now see emerging by formation of hospital networks and systems. In this presentation, we break down the DEA literature on different new dimensions and show a clear imbalance in problem settings studied by the academic community, highlighting new opportunities towards problems practice is currently challenged with.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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