Assessing the technical efficiency of Brazil's teaching hospitals using data envelopment analysis

The general objective of this study was to assess the technical efficiency of Brazil's teaching hospitals using data envelopment analysis (DEA). To this end, a quantitative exploratory study was conducted with secondary data from the national health information system (DATASUS) using an output-oriented DEA model. The study population consisted of 29 large-sized teaching hospitals located in the country's Center-West, South, Southeast, and North regions. Twelve hospitals were shown to be on the efficient frontier (technically efficient) and 17 were off the frontier. Absolute efficiency values were calculated for the hospitals that were off the frontier, using benchmarks with weighting for benchmarking. Private for-profit hospitals were shown to be the most efficient, followed by private not-for-profit and public facilities. The findings of this study suggest that DEA has potential for assessing technical efficiency in hospital settings in relation to operational capacity.