Browsing by Subject "Data envelopment analysis"

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    Examination on level of scale efficiency in public hospitals in Tanzania
    (2021-08-11) Fumbwe, Fatuma; Lihawa, Robert; Andrew, Felician; Kinyanjui, George; Mkuna, Eliaza
    Purpose Tanzania has implemented policies that aim at improving health sector performance as well as the general health status of citizens. Establishment of community insurance fund, increase government budget allocation in health sector, establishment of institutions for critical and special diseases like Tanzania Ocean road cancer institute, Muhimbili Orthopaedic Institute and many other that aim at improving sector efficiency. These efforts and policies had a direct impact on improving the health sector and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite these improvement efforts, the health sector continues to face enormous challenges. Among the major challenges identified is the level of inefficiencies in healthcare delivery. It is for this reason; this paper examines the scale efficiency level in Tanzania’s public hospitals. Methods Using data from the Ministry of Health, this paper employs the Input based Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to examine Tanzania’s public hospital efficiency levels. DEA has been applied because it can handle multiple inputs and output that can have different units simultaneously. Results Findings showed that the average scale efficiency was 78.6%.and 72.9%for regional and district hospitals respectively. Additionally, 43.8% of the regional referral hospitals attained the most productive scale size compared to 21.05% in district hospitals. Conclusion The study concludes that there is dire need for the ministry of health to consider resource reallocation across public hospitals. Periodic re-estimation of efficiency levels coupled with increased health care input injection is of urgent need.
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    Productivity benchmarking of free-range sheep operations : technical efficiency, correlates of productivity and dominant technology variants for Laingsburg, South Africa
    (2014-08-05) Conradie, Beatrice; Piesse, Jenifer
    Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to benchmark extensive sheep operations in Laingsburg in the Central Karoo, South Africa, with data from the 2012 production season. An input oriented variable returns to scale frontier identified twelve efficient firms, and nine more that are technically efficient but not scale efficient. The top third’s overall efficiency score was 0.999. For the bottom third the average efficiency score was just 0.346, which indicates that there is substantial room for improvement amongst bottom third producers in this production system. Overall efficiency was correlated with stocking density, flock size, unit production cost and profitability, cumulative family experience of farming and the use of family labour, but not with farm size, breed choice or any proxy for individual experience or ability. Predation rates in particular were uncorrelated with productivity scores and reproductive performance was only weakly correlated with it. While most farms could theoretically improve their efficiency by intensifying their operations, a closer analysis of best practice firms revealed a spectrum of optimal intensities including the possibility of restoring rangelands by deliberate understocking. Grazing strategy and the degree of labour self-sufficiency emerged as the key determinants of optimal intensity.