Measuring the technical efficiency of Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education hospitals: 2007

limited resources and slow returns on investment in hospital industry as well as other factors such as high cost of hospital construction, the need for expensive and high tech equipment and shortage of skilled manpower have caused the efficient use of resources and effective administration of hospitals to be for a very critical issue for health policy makers. The aim of this descriptive and analytical study is to use Data Envelopment Analysis method for measuring of hospital efficiency. This was a descriptive and analytical study. We used the data from 122 hospitals affiliated With Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Random sampling was used to select these 122 hospitals. We then used Data Envelopment Analysis method for measuring the hospital efficiency. Using the first model we determined the average technical efficiency in non deprived-training-general hospitals, non deprived training-general hospitals, non deprived-non training-general hospitals, deprived-non training- specialized hospitals, to be 0.710, 0.748, 0.458, 0.559 and 0.809 respectively. The highest average efficiency was found in non deprived-non training-specialized hospitals in this model. Technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency measured by the second model among 122 hospitals was 0.436, 0.591 and 0.746 respectively which demonstrates the weak hospital performance and a waste of 56% of resource by these hospitals. based on the results of the first model we can conclude the hospitals located in deprived areas are less efficient than other hospitals, which is confirmed in the second model as well. We can conclude that the main cause of inefficiency in the hospitals is due to mismanagement which has caused 71% of inefficiency in this set of hospitals.