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.
- ISSN: 18151973 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18151973
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.
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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