1887

OECD Economics Department Working Papers

Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.

The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

English, French

Improving the Efficiency of Health Care Spending

Selected Evidence on Hospital Performance

There are no ready-made data on hospital outputs and inputs which would allow comprehensive international comparisons of hospital efficiency to be carried out. This paper, therefore, relies on selected evidence to compare hospital efficiency in a subset of OECD countries, based on three different approaches relying on, respectively: i) unit costs for standard hospital treatments; ii) overall efficiency levels in a set of paired countries; iii) within-country dispersion in individual hospital efficiency. The analysis suggests substantial cross-country differences in hospital performance. Although country coverage varies between the different approaches, making it difficult to assess the extent to which comparisons provide a consistent picture of national efficiency levels, cross-checks between the different indicator sets tend to support the robustness of the country rankings.

English

Keywords: unit costs, non-parametric methods, health care, hospital efficiency, diagnosis related groups
JEL: C14: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General / Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General; H51: Public Economics / National Government Expenditures and Related Policies / Government Expenditures and Health; H41: Public Economics / Publicly Provided Goods / Public Goods; I18: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health; D24: Microeconomics / Production and Organizations / Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity; I12: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health Behavior; I11: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Analysis of Health Care Markets
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