Technical effeciency and total factor productivity growth in Uganda's District Referral hospitals

Abstract

The study measures the technical efficiency and total factor productivity growtth of 25 district referral hospitals from three regions of Uganda over the 1993-2003 period.This study is motivated by a desire to evaluate the ongoing health sector reforms in Uganda which in part are seeking to improve the efficiency of health services.Nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used in the measurement of hospital technical efficiency whilst the DEA-Malmquist index is used in the measurement of hospital total factor productivity change. The results indicate the existence of different degrees of technical and scale inefficiencies in Uganda's district referral hospitals over the sample period.