On Measuring Technical Efficiency of the Health System in India: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Huge investments have been made in improving the health system of India since early independence, which has resulted in health outcomes such as infant and maternal maternity rates and life expectancy levels to exhibit impressive reductions and increments, respectively. Although at the national level these have been impressive, it is appalling at the state level. States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu have always topped in displaying low infant and maternal mortality rates associated with high levels of health workers and infrastructure in contrast to states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In the present study, we use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess and compare the health system across states of India. Using DEA, we attempt to derive desired levels of health manpower and infrastructure to be emulated, to make the health systems efficient. The study limits to two outputs and two inputs for 27 states of India and used the output oriented DEA. It was found that of the 27 states only six of them were technically efficient, having an efficiency score of 1.00. The remaining states were technically inefficient and were using more than required amount of inputs to achieve the current levels of output. These inefficient states could make their health system efficient by following the efficient states as peers.
Source: Journal of Health Management - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Articles Source Type: research