An Appraisal on Efficiency of SSO's Health Centers During the Years 2012-2014 Based on DEA Approach

Owning more than 10 percent of hospital beds in Iran, Social Security Organization has faced a %52/2 increase in health care costs in 2014. health centers, as the largest consumer of resources within the health system, are not same in performance and efficiency. It is critical to distinguish inefficient health centers and to identify weaknesses in the performance process in order to use resources effectively and improve services. In doing so, This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of SSO’s health centers in the provincial scale. This paper is a cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical study covering years 2012-2014. In order to assess the efficiency, data envelopment analysisas well as MaxDEA software have been used. The average technical efficiency of SSO-related health centers during years 2012-2014 was 0.944, 0.945 and 0.92 respectively and the possibility of decrease in the primary sources without any change in the obtained outputs level were 5.6, 5.5 and 8 percent. Despite the health centers’ high efficiency scores, there were unfavorable slacks, not least in human resources, indicating that there is an inefficient allocation, that in turn increases the staff and medical costs. The SSO should employ human resources such as nurses and physicians to bed in terms of accepted standards.. Inefficient use of beds in health centers may lead to an increase in costs and a decrease in earnings.