The effect of quality and socio-demographic variables on efficiency measures in primary health care

This paper aims to extend the literature on measuring efficiency in primary health care by considering the influence of quality indicators and environmental variables conjointly in a case study. In particular, environmental variables are represented by patients' characteristics and quality indicators are based on technical aspects. In order to deal with both aspects, different extensions of data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology are applied. Specifically, we use weight restrictions to ensure that the efficiency scores assigned to the evaluated units take quality data into account, and a four-stage model to identify which exogenous variables have impact on performance as well as to compute efficiency scores that incorporate this information explicitly. The results provide evidence in support of the importance of including information about both aspects in the analysis so that the efficiency measures obtained can be interpreted as an accurate reflection of performance.