The relationship between the efficiency of orthopedic wards and the socio-economic status of their patients

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of the socio-economic status of patients on the efficiency of orthopedic wards in acute hospitals in Israel (20 hospitals), from the viewpoint of the regulator—Israel Ministry of Health. At the first stage, data envelopment analysis is used with two inputs, and three outputs, where one output is undesirable—“number of deaths”—which also reflects the quality of the health services. At the second stage, various nonparametric tests are utilized to test the relationship between the socio-economic status of patients and the efficiency. As by-product DEA provides benchmark analysis, which indicates the peers of each inefficient ward, and the I/O improvements are needed for achieving efficiency. Two versions of DEA were used: the output oriented version (variable returns to scale), and the non-oriented version (Additive). Further analysis provides comparison of the results with other simple efficiency measures. We also compare between the efficiency from the regulator viewpoint and the hospitals’ viewpoint.