The role of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) pattern in the efficiency of social security hospitals in Iran

Background: A remarkable increase has been observed in hospital expenditure in many countries during recent years, drawing especial attention to the problem. This study was conducted to present one of the operational research techniques pattern in evaluation of the hospital efficiency. Methods: The ratio analysis method was used to evaluate the hospital efficiency. This method is not effective in cases in which the relationship between an input and several outputs or several inputs and several outputs are involved.Data Envelopment Analysis Pattern (DEA) is one of the operational research techniques, lacking the problems of ratio method while efficiency evaluation can determine the critical parts of hospital, reducing the efficiency of the whole hospital and meanwhile compensating the deficiency in a particular measurement. In order to introduce this method in hospital efficacy evaluation, 18 general hospitals affiliated to Iran Social Security Organization were included. Results: This study revealed that Data Envelopment Analysis Pattern had more capacity than previous methods in relation to evaluation of the complicated organizations like hospitals. Conclusion: Operational research techniques in efficiency evaluation would provide the possibility to compare different efficiencies among various hospitals and present the necessary solutions to compensate the insufficiency and to correct them for the managers.This technique was used for the first time in this study to measure hospital efficiency in Iran