Department of Business Administration, Seoul School of Integrated Sciences and Technologies (aSSIST), Seoul 03767, Korea.
Department of e-business, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Korea.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jun 27;17(13):4617. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17134617.
The healthcare and welfare policies of nations, as well as the amount of investments put into these areas, vary across countries. Investments in healthcare and welfare have been increasing worldwide which brings the question of assessing the efficiency of these investments. There are, however, difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of such investments due to differences in countries' economic development levels and due to the differences in data definition issues. There are only a limited number of studies in the literature that employ consistent and comparable indicators across countries. This study evaluates the healthcare investment efficiency and health competitiveness efficiency of 34 developing countries in Asia using a two-stage dynamic data envelopment analysis approach. Furthermore, we employ a broader measure of indicators on national healthcare and welfare policies and outcomes, in addition to the investment data on healthcare and welfare expenditures. Our findings indicate that the establishment of an investment environment with a consolidated approach and management is an important factor that increases the efficiency of investments in healthcare and welfare sectors. A consistent delivery of the national policy strategy is also crucial for reaching the medium-and long-term targets for each country. For example, if a country establishes healthcare and welfare policies that focus on improving its indicators with low efficiencies, the output will be improved and a better return on investment will be ensured in a long-term perspective.
各国的医疗保健和福利政策以及在这些领域的投资金额因国家而异。全球范围内对医疗保健和福利的投资一直在增加，这就提出了评估这些投资效率的问题。然而，由于各国经济发展水平的差异以及数据定义问题的差异，评估此类投资的效果存在困难。文献中只有少数研究采用了在各国之间具有一致性和可比性的指标。本研究使用两阶段动态数据包络分析方法评估了亚洲 34 个发展中国家的医疗保健投资效率和卫生竞争力效率。此外，除了医疗保健和福利支出的投资数据外，我们还采用了更广泛的国家医疗保健和福利政策及成果指标。我们的研究结果表明，建立一个具有统一方法和管理的投资环境是提高医疗保健和福利部门投资效率的重要因素。一致实施国家政策战略对于实现每个国家的中长期目标也至关重要。例如，如果一个国家制定了医疗保健和福利政策，重点是提高低效率指标，那么从长远来看，产出将得到改善，投资回报将得到更好的保证。
