Value Judgment In Data Envelopment Analyses (Dea) Of The Secondary Health Care In Plateau State, Nigeria
Keywords:
Value Judgment, Efficiency, HealthcareAbstract
Most Data Envelopment Analyses (DEA) focus on determining "efficient frontiers" or better still "best practices" for inefficient Decision Making Units (DMUs). For systems that render basically service to the society like the Hotels, Schools, Hospitals, etc., it is possible for a DMU to operate at the inefficient level not necessarily because it has any short comings but because it has excess input and/or limited area of impact. Increasing its output may be practically not possible because its target population is smaller compared to its size. Reducing its input will on the other hand impair its function and would cause to be defeated, the purpose for its establishment. Most times, Management have strong preferences about the relative importance of the different factors and what constitutes best practice, therefore it becomes imperative to incorporate these preferences as Value Judgment in the DEA Model. This study therefore, focuses on measuring the Technical efficiency of Hospitals operating in Plateau State taking into consideration Management Preferences (value judgment) using DEA. The study used Microsoft Excel Solver for the DEA analysis and found that the poor Health Status of the state is not attributable to the Secondary Health Care system only. The study thus recommends among others that Plateau State Government should consider subsidizing the cost of services of her hospitals to encourage patronage from the catchment community who obviously resort to finding substandard help from quacks and other private operators.
Keywords: , , , Management
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