Hospital Performance Evaluation in Uganda: A Super-Efficiency Data Envelope Analysis Model

Standard Data Envelope Analysis models result in a large fraction of the observations becoming 100 percent efficient. The article measures the technical efficiency of 25 district referral hospitals from three regions of Uganda over the 1999-2003 period. It applies a super-efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis model. The application of a super-efficiency model was occasioned by the failure of standard data envelopment analysis models to rank the efficient set of hospitals which attain an efficiency score of unity. The results of the standard data envelopment analysis models indicate the existence of different degrees of technical and scale inefficiency in Uganda’s district referral hospitals. With the super-efficiency model, a ranking of the efficient units is possible. When super-efficiency models are executed, hospitals can be ranked and categorised into four groups: strongly super-efficient; super-efficient; efficient and inefficient.