Babalola Tesleem K, Moodley Indres
Department of Public Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.
JMIR Res Protoc. 2019 Mar 14;8(3):e12037. doi: 10.2196/12037.
The central objective of policy makers and health managers is efficiency in the delivery of health care. With frequent reports of global economic crises, there is a need to continuously measure the performance of various sectors of the health care system. This can inform the decision-making process toward allocating scarce resources with the aim of maximizing output.
The aim of this study is to determine the technical efficiency (TE) of public sector district hospitals in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa to provide information that will assist in policy formulation that may further assist in more efficient resource allocation decisions.
This is a health system research based on a quantitative research approach. All 38 public district hospitals in the 11 municipalities of the province will be included in this study. The data for the study will include inputs from hospitals' operations that contribute toward subsequent outputs. The input data will include information such as the number of health professionals (doctors, nurses, and other personnel) and number of hospital beds, whereas the output data will include information such as outpatient visits and number of admissions or discharge. Other data categories to be included will be determined by data availability and will be uniform for all facilities. Data for each facility for a 3-year period from 2014 to 2017 will be obtained from databases of the district health information, basic accounting, and personnel salary systems. On the basis of the data obtained, a model will be developed that can be used to assess how TE of public districts hospitals may be improved. TE will be determined using Data Envelopment Analysis, and factors influencing efficiency will be computed using StataCorp statistical package.
As of February 2019, the study is at the data collection, data input, and analysis stages. The results are expected to be available from the second quarter of 2019.
Findings from this study can add to tools available to policy makers, health planners, and managers in making decisions about resource allocation in health care systems. Moreover, these findings will be disseminated electronically and in print.
INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/12037.
政策制定者和卫生管理人员的核心目标是提高医疗保健服务的效率。随着全球经济危机的频繁报道，有必要持续衡量医疗保健系统各部门的绩效。这可以为决策过程提供信息，以便在分配稀缺资源时实现产出最大化。
本研究旨在确定南非夸祖鲁 - 纳塔尔省公共部门地区医院的技术效率（TE），以提供有助于政策制定的信息，进而有助于做出更有效的资源分配决策。
这是一项基于定量研究方法的卫生系统研究。该省11个市的所有38家公共地区医院都将纳入本研究。研究数据将包括医院运营中有助于产生后续产出的投入。投入数据将包括卫生专业人员（医生、护士和其他人员）数量及病床数量等信息，而产出数据将包括门诊就诊次数和入院或出院人数等信息。其他要纳入的数据类别将根据数据可用性确定，并且所有机构的数据将保持一致。2014年至2017年为期3年的各机构数据将从地区卫生信息、基本会计和人员工资系统的数据库中获取。基于所获得的数据，将开发一个模型，用于评估如何提高公共地区医院的技术效率。将使用数据包络分析确定技术效率，并使用StataCorp统计软件包计算影响效率的因素。
截至2019年2月，该研究正处于数据收集、数据录入和分析阶段。预计2019年第二季度可得出结果。
本研究结果可为政策制定者、卫生规划者和管理人员在医疗保健系统资源分配决策时提供更多可用工具。此外，这些研究结果将以电子和印刷形式传播。
国际注册报告识别码（IRRID）：DERR1-10.2196/12037
