Improvement potential in Danish elderly care

Area of Science:

• Health economics
• Public administration
• Operations research

Background:

• Aggregated production data in Danish elderly care hinders precise cost allocation to services.
• Existing methods like Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) offer limited insights into specific input efficiencies.
• Assessing resource utilization is crucial for optimizing public service delivery.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate resource utilization in Danish municipal elderly care.
• To compare the performance assessment capabilities of Multi-directional Efficiency Analysis (MEA) against Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).
• To identify specific areas for efficiency improvements in elderly care resource allocation.

Main Methods:

• Application of Multi-directional Efficiency Analysis (MEA) to aggregated production data from Danish municipalities.
• Comparative analysis of MEA's performance insights versus traditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).
• Identification of input-specific relative improvement potentials.

Main Results:

• MEA provides a more detailed performance evaluation than DEA, enabling assessment of input-specific improvement potentials.
• Considerable potential for resource utilization improvement exists across all input categories in Danish elderly care.
• Administrative staff represents the area with the largest relative potential for efficiency gains.

Conclusions:

• Multi-directional Efficiency Analysis (MEA) is a superior method for analyzing efficiency in complex public service settings like elderly care.
• Danish municipalities can achieve significant resource savings by targeting improvements, particularly in administrative functions.
• The findings underscore the need for refined data collection and analytical approaches to optimize elderly care resource management.