Performance evaluation for health-care sectors using a dynamic network data envelopment analysis approach

This study examines performance of provincial health-care system in China, using a dynamic network data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. We focus on efficiency improvements both within provincial health-care system and within two separate internal sub-divisions. The administration division engages in financial management while the medical care division provides medical care services. Then there are two main results. First, the average overall efficiency score of provincial health-care system is 0.9316 from 2010 to 2017. Second, the productivity progress in administration division is lower than that in medical care division, and the technical advances contribute most of the productivity progress. The research gap and the innovation of this paper lie in three aspects: First, this paper opens the black box of health production function and use the network DEA to analyze Chinese provincial health-care system and its inner two constructs. Second, this paper discusses the efficiency scores as well as dynamic changes in one model. Finally, this paper tries to reveal the regional heterogeneity of static efficiency as well as the dynamic efficiency changes.