Hospital ownership and operating efficiency: Evidence from Taiwan

This paper employs the non-parametric data envelopment analysis to document empirical evidence on the relationship between hospital ownership and operating efficiency using annual cross-sectional data on Taiwan hospitals over the period 1996-1997. Hospitals within the same category are compared on the basis of their relative efficiency. Conventional and data-envelopment-analysis-based test procedures are employed to test for efficiency differences between public and private hospitals. The statistical test results indicate that, in general, public hospitals are less efficient than private hospitals for both regional and district hospitals. Specifically, we provide evidence that private hospitals without intensive-care units outperform their public counterparts. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.