• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.84-104
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• 2000

This paper analyzes the technical efficiency of thirty two hospitals in Korea using DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis). DEA provides an efficiency measure for each hospital compared to the most efficient one. The amount and sources of inefficiency that are identified by the DEA are useful for benchmarking to improve efficiency. The results from multiple regression analysis and Wilcoxon Rank Sum test show that bed turnover, hospital size, and average length of stay are related to hospital efficiency.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.38-53
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• 2001

The price of the hospitals' services is regulated by the governmental health insurance reimbursement schedule in Korea. On the other hand, the emphasis on the quality of care of hospitals service is ever increasing. Under the environment, hospitals have to understand the effects of the activities to improve quality of care on efficiency and on financial performance so that they develop a management strategy that allows quality of care, operational efficiency, and financial achievement simultaneously. This study investigates the relationship among the concepts. The sample for the study includes 23 hospitals that have more than 300 beds. The concept of quality of care is measured by the score reported by the Hospital Standardization Survey (HSS) instituted by Korean Hospital Association. Efficiency is measured by the ratio of number of employee to the number of patients served. Financial performance is measured by the financial ratios indicating the profitability of a hospital. An analysis is performed using the multiple regression. The results show significant positive relationships between the HSS score and efficiency indicators, md between the HSS score and profit measures. However, the significant positive relationship between the HSS score and profit measures disappeared when efficiency indicators were introduced to the model. This study concludes that the structural quality of a hospital has a positive effect on efficiency of the hospital and that the structural qualify indirectly affects the financial performance of a hospital through the improvement of efficiency. Based on the findings, the implications on hospital management and health policy are discussed.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.44-65
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• 2023

Purposes: As super-aging population and low fertility rates are threatening the sustainability of the National Health Insurance funds, enhancing the efficiency of hospital management is paramount. In the past, studies analyzing the efficiencies of hospitals primarily made inter-hospital comparisons, but it is important to assess hospitals' internal efficiency and develop improvement measures in order to attain practical improvements in hospital efficiencies. The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficiencies of specialists by medical specialty in a hospital in order to provide foundational data for efficient hospital management. Methodology/Approach: We used the activity-based costing (ABC) data and hospital statistical data from one tertiary hospital in Seoul to analyze the efficiency of specialists by medical specialty. Efficiency was analyzed and compared among specialists using the data envelopment analysis developed by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (DEA-CCR) model and the slacks-based measure (SBM) models. The input variables were labor cost, material cost, and operational expenses, and the output variables were the number of outpatients, number of inpatients, outpatient revenue, and inpatient revenue. Findings: First, there was a marked deviation in efficiency across specialists. Second, there was a marked deviation in efficiency across medical specialties. Third, there was little difference in efficiency according to the specialist's sex, age, and job position. Fourth, the SBM model produced more conservative results and better explained efficiency parameters than the CCR model. Practical Implications: The efficiency of a specialist was more influenced by their medical specialty than their personal characteristics, namely sex, age, and job position. Therefore, Further research is needed to analyze the efficiencies of each subspecialty and identify factors that contribute to the variations in efficiencies across medical specialties, such as clinical practices and fee structures.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.183-202
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• 1997

Health care organizations have been faced with financial difficulties under turbulent health care environment. This situation led hospitals to concentrate their efforts to improve their managerial efficiency in various ways. This study aims to evaluate technical efficiency of 31 tertiary hospitals in Korea and find determinants which are closely related with hospital efficiency. Data envelopment analysis(DEA) and Tobit Model were adopted for study. For the analysis, human resource factors such as number of physicians, nurses, and administrative staffs are used as input variables and the number of inpatients and outpatients) are used as output variables. Among 31 hospitals, in CCR model, 8 hositals showed efficiency score 1 which means they have been operated in very efficient ways and BCC model showed 13 of 31 hospitals as efficient organizations. Next, we analyzed determinants which are closely related with hospital efficiency. By using Tobit model, the study showed hospital size, Quality of care, value added per capita, and revenue per patient were closely related with hospital efficiency, However, it appeared that financial status of hospitals(i.e : making profit or not) was not related with hospital efficiency.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.45-61
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• 2004

This study is to identify the differences in service quality for the 2nd-scale hospital Industries. The subjects of this survey for the empirical analysis are limited to the 2nd- scale hospitals in Korea: data are collected in Seoul, Incheon and Kyungki areas. The results are as follows. First, the efficiency for hospital operations confirmed the differences in bed scale. Second, the high-efficiency hospitals attach importance to efficiency with more than 100 bad scale and the low-efficiency hospitals attach Importance to service quality with less than 100 bed scale.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.22-47
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• 1997

This paper evaluated the relative efficiency of 33 provincial medical centers using Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) and compared the DEA efficiency results with those of the current method conducted by the management evaluation team. DEA Was selected as an alternative efficiency evaluation method since it could handle multiple inputs and multiple outputs simultaneously and identify the sources of inefficiency. To analyze the sensitivity of productivity values to the variable sets, four different sets of input and output variables were identified. Results showed that most of the medical centers are operating far away from the efficiency frontier supporting the previous results. Some centers showed 100% efficiency regardless of the selected variable sets. DEA results are compared with current management evaluation results. Some inconsistencies were found for some DMUs between the results of two methods showing the existence of methodology bias. DEA results and ratio analyses results mostly agree for 1992 data.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.27-48
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficiency change and its determinants of the regional public hospitals. We utilize 34 regional public hospital's panel data for 6 years from 2003 to 2008. We use DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis)-CCR, BCC model, DEA/Window model, and DEA Profiling. The empirical results show the following findings. First, technical efficiency shows that approximately 3.6% of inefficiency exists on the regional public hospitals and it reveals that the cause for technical inefficiency is due to scale inefficiency. Second, DEA/Window results show that the stable dissimilarity by standard deviation, LDP of CCR. Third, the results of partial efficiency by DEA Profiling show that increase efficiency depends on the number of beds, doctors, and nurses.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.143-169
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• 2010

This is a case study of Seoul St. Mary's Hospital applying a real-time enterprise (RTE) strategy to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency with the main process of medical institutions. The hospital is applying an RTE strategy to get real-time information on occurrences at each contact point of the main process of the medical institution from reservation to discharge through dashboard and to resolve issues through rapid decision-making. The RTE strategy of the hospital has some summaries: First, the hospital has linked a hospital management strategy to the RTE strategy to build a patient-centered treatment process. Second, the hospital has operated a control tower for change management and implementation monitoring in the process of implementing the RTE strategy. Third, the hospital has built systematic RTE-based environment as an application program in which the nU System is linked to Business Processor Renovation (BPR) promoted from 2006 on. Fourth, the hospital is applying a strategy to improve efficiency in operating the hospital by increasing customer satisfaction, removing inefficiency and variability, and managing medical resources efficiently through the RTE strategy. Fifth, it has established an information-sharing system through authority management for each user in terms of RTE information. Sixth, it has supplemented limitations of short-term information of the RTE strategy by linking the key performance index to the cost information system in order to improve performance of the RTE strategy. Seventh, it has improved customer satisfaction and achieved higher performance in improving operational efficiency, as compared with rival hospitals, through the RTE strategy.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.69-93
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• 2008

Rising healthcare cost is a global phenomenon that justifies governments' introduction of 'incentive regulation' plan for the improvement of hospital efficiency. A number of previous studies tried to evaluate the efficiency of healthcare organization by using Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA), a common efficiency benchmarking method. However, there is a concern that this kind of efficiency evaluation could induce "quantity-quality trade-off". Moreover, as quality aspect is especially important in terms of 'effectiveness' of health care, it should be considered in efficiency evaluation of healthcare organization. A number of different models were tried so far to incorporate quality aspect into DEA, however, none is universally recognized as a standard. Thus, in this study, previous quality-incorporating DEA models were categorized into 6 types according to the way of incorporating quality aspect, and strengths and limitations of each type were reviewed with a set of artificial data as an example. Based on this review, a new quality-incorporating efficiency evaluation model, named Quality-adjusted output DEA(QAO-DEA), was suggested. As an exploratory empirical analysis, technical efficiency of human resource were measured with different quality-incorporating DEA models, using 2004 data from National University Hospitals. In conclusion, Quality-adjusted output DEA(QAO-DEA) model seems to be one of the most desirable alternatives to incorporate quality aspect in efficiency evaluation of hospital, and deserves the consideration as a policy tool to induce simultaneous improvement of both efficiency and quality.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.161-176
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• 2013

This research analyzed Raise Capital type and Investment Efficiency for non-profit hospitals in Korea. 152 cases of financial information from 2007 to 2010 were utilized for analysis. As a result of analysis, Raise Capital for Borrowings to total assets was primarily used, taking around 40% on average, and the method of Raise Capital with significant difference among Medical Institutions was Liabilities in Excluded Borrowings to Total Assets and Capital Stock & Capital Reserves to Total Assets. Besides, the relation between Invested capital and Investment efficiency was opposite each other in the non-profit hospitals, and Region was an important element influencing over Productivity per Value Added. In addition, in the investment activity of non-profit hospitals in the light of Investment Efficiency, only hospitals among Medical Institution types had a character of Capital Intensive, and General Hospital and Geriatric & Long-term Medical Care Hospital among Medical Institution types showed a character of Labor Intensive in the light of Performance.