Performance Evaluation of Hospitals Affiliated With Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Based on a DEA Approach and in the Presence of Undesirable Factors Before and After Health Sector Development Plan

Change in the health system is always considered as the main concern of governments which in turn may have many positive and negative effects. The health sector development plan is one of the programs aiming at improving the therapeutic and economic dimensions of families, given priority by the 11th government of Iran, and is expected to improve performance of the medical sciences universities and their affiliated hospitals, in addition to develop their educational, health, research and cultural systems. The aim of this study is to evaluate technical efficiency of 22 public hospitals of Guilan university of medical science before (April 2013 to March 2014) and after (April 2014 to March 2015) implementation of health sector development plan, using data envelopment analysis approach and in accordance with the production of undesirable factors.
Materials and Methods The current research is a descriptive-analytical type and also a cross sectional one. The research population includes 22 public hospitals of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, with enumeration chosen as the sampling method and the data were collected from documents. Finally, the collected data were analyzed based on the coding the DEA weak disposability model in GAMS software. The findings indicate that before implementation of health sector development plan (2013- 2014), 14 hospitals (63%) were efficient, while after its implementation (2014-2015), number of efficient hospitals increased to 16 units (73%). The average of technical efficiency also computed as 0.954 and 0.958, respectively. Although, observing the effects of changes in social systems often requires time lapse, however, one year after the implementation of the health system development plan, the average of performance in public hospitals of Guilan province was improved.
Conflict of interest: non declared