Background: In developed countries around the world there is a trend to enhance the public-private collaboration in healthcare. In Spain, a decentralized country with a NHS funded with taxes and universal coverage, commissioning to for-profit private hospitals the production of healthcare...

The principal aim of this paper is to estimate a stochastic frontier cost function and an inefficiency effects model in the analysis of the primary health care services purchased by the public authority and supplied by 180 providers in 1996 in Catalonia. The evidence from our sample does not...