Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD 20850, USA.
Med Care Res Rev. 2011 Feb;68(1 Suppl):3S-19S. doi: 10.1177/1077558710384878. Epub 2010 Nov 11.
Frontier techniques, including data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), have been used to measure health care provider efficiency in hundreds of published studies. Although these methods have the potential to be useful to decision makers, their utility is limited by both methodological questions concerning their application, as well as some disconnect between the information they provide and the insight sought by decision makers. The articles in this special issue focus on the application of DEA and SFA to hospitals with the hope of making these techniques more accurate and accessible to end users. This introduction to the special issue highlights the importance of measuring the efficiency of health care providers, provides a background on frontier techniques, contains an overview of the articles in the special issue, and suggests a research agenda for DEA and SFA.
前沿技术，包括数据包络分析（DEA）和随机前沿分析（SFA），已被用于衡量数百项已发表的医学文献中的医疗服务提供者的效率。尽管这些方法有可能对决策者有用，但由于其应用方法存在问题，以及它们提供的信息与决策者寻求的见解之间存在脱节，其效用受到限制。本期特刊中的文章侧重于 DEA 和 SFA 在医院中的应用，希望使这些技术对最终用户更加准确和易于使用。本特刊引言强调了衡量医疗服务提供者效率的重要性，提供了前沿技术的背景知识，概述了特刊中的文章，并为 DEA 和 SFA 提出了一个研究议程。
