Technical efficiency of public health centers in three districts in Ethiopia: two-stage data envelopment analysis

Abstract

Eight out of the 16 health centers in the study were found to be technically efficient, with an average score of 90% (standard deviation = 17%). This indicates that on average they could have reduce their utilization of all inputs by about 10% without reducing output. On the other hand, 8 out of 16 health centers were found to be scale efficient, with an average scale efficiency score of 94% (standard deviation = 9%). The inefficient health centers had an average scale score of 89%; implying there is potential for increasing total outputs by about 11% using the existing capacity/size. Catchment population and number of clinical staff were found to be directly associated with efficiency, while the number of nonclinical staff was found to be inversely associated with efficiency.