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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Bruce Hollingsworth
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In this paper we use non-parametric mathematical programming models to compute and decompose Malmquist indices of productivity and quality change, which are used to evaluate the reforms in the UK National Health Service in the early nineties. We focus on acute hospitals and we study them over the first five years of the reforms. The findings of the study indicate that there was a productivity slowdown in the first year after the reforms but productivity progress in the subsequent years and thus, overall there was a net gain in productivity over the entire period considered. Productivity trends were dominated by technical change rather than hospital relative efficiency changes, as hospitals were already largely relatively efficient at the time of the introduction of the reforms. In fact, over the last four years in the period studied there was small relative efficiency regress and this does not bear out the argument that the reforms would increase hospital efficiency. The productivity changes are similar when service quality is incorporated in the analysis but the magnitude of these changes diminishes. Quality of service followed different trends to productivity change and this may have been the price for the productivity gains achieved.
Author(s): Maniadakis N, Hollingsworth B, Thanassoulis E
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Health Care Management Science
Year: 1999
Volume: 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 75-85
Print publication date: 01/01/1999
ISSN (print): 1386-9620
ISSN (electronic): 1572-9389
Publisher: Springer
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1019079526671
DOI: 10.1023/A:1019079526671
PubMed id: 10916604
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