The complexity of indicator’s system derives from the very complexity of the health concept as defined by the World Health Organization that "Health is that state of good : physical, mental, social and consists not only in the absence of disease or infirmity". The indicators should cover both...

The health care services have been characterised by a growing demand by the citizens leading to the need of more and more resources. Population aging, new pathologies and drugs as well as new treatments are some of the major factors for this. However, in hospitals, for example, consumption of a...

Ecofin-Oecd methodology is applied to investigate the past trends of the public health care expenditure in Basilicata. The expenditure is standardized to take into account the composition of the population in terms of age. Did Basilicata spend too much compared to the Italian average? The answer...

Activity-based financing (ABF) was implemented in the Norwegian hospital sector from 1 July 1997. A fraction (30 to 50 per cent) of the block grant from the state to the county councils has been replaced by a matching grant depending upon the number and composition of hospital treatments. As a...

Using the 1997-1998 New South Wales public-hospitals comparison data, we investigate the hospital-level inefficiency by applying a stochastic-frontier multiproduct cost function. We use a flexible translog cost function to reduce the measurement errors of the outputs of the hospital. The main...

Many international institutions, including the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), have recommended that countries adopt universal health care coverage, believing that adequate health care is a basic human right. Thailand became the first developing country to introduce universal...

Efficiency measurement has been one of the most extensively explored areas of health services research over the past two decades. Despite this attention, few studies have examined whether a provider’s efficiency varies on a monthly, quarterly or other, sub-annual basis. This paper presents an...

This paper aims to provide a general overview of the health care sector reform in Colombia, which introduced the market principles of competition into the sector functioning. Therefor, this article analyzes its antecedents, characteristics and consequences. Relying on the interpretation of the...

We analyze the efficiency and productivity growth of a representative sample of Portuguese hospitals from 1997 to 2004, using an innovative approach by employing the directional distance function and the Luenberger productivity indicator. The primary advantage of our approach is that both input...

The highly regarded Austrian health system delivers good quality and easily accessible services, but is costly. Its governance and funding structure is highly fragmented and it makes too much use of inpatient care in hospitals. Entry and competition opportunities are de facto limited in most...