Evaluating the Efficiency of Hospital Emergencies during COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis in the Presence of Undesirable Inputs in DEA

One of the major concerns in healthcare management is the optimal allocation of staffing and resources. The global crisis created by the COVID-19 Pandemic has created extreme strains both on the staffing and the resources available to the healthcare systems. It has geometrically added to the number of patients seeking health services. In addition, the Pandemic has dramatically increased the rate of mortality in the hospitals in an unprecedented way. Therefore, in this research, in order not to sacrifice the quality of the services provided, we have used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to determine the efficiency of the emergency departments in the hospitals and the possible improvements that could be made to them. As traditional DEA models do not seek to reduce the undesirable outputs and increase the undesirable inputs, in addition to determining the efficiency of decision making units (DMU) despite some undesirable input components, the effect of these units on performance is investigated. To this end, considering the problem assumptions, first, a set of proper production possibilities is defined. Finally, a new method is introduced to determine the system’s performance in the presence of some undesirable input components. The impact of undesirable components on determining efficiency is specified, and a real example is provided consisting of emergency rooms in 30 hospitals, in which five desirable inputs and four desirable outputs along with one undesirable input are considered. The example is solved using the presented model, and the efficiency scores are determined.