In this paper we estimate cost efficiency and technological characteristics of public hospitals in Piemonte over the period from 2000 to 2004. During the Nineties, different regulatory reforms aiming at controlling health expenditure affected the Italian National Health Service, ranging from the introduction of a new reimbursement scheme for hospitals (DRG-based) at the micro level, to the implementation of fiscal federalism at the macro level. We argue that all these legislative interventions rendered producers more prone to control costs, in order to be able to meet financial constraints. Our empirical findings support this hypothesis: average cost inefficiency, computed after estimating a Translog stochastic cost frontier by the Battese and Coelli (1992) approach, reduced remarkably during the observed years, while the adoption of more effective technologies shifted upward the minimum-cost frontier. We also find evidence of relevant scale economies not exploited by producers, which decrease with ospital size (number of beds) and output complexity (average DRG weight).
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth - Moncalieri (TO) in its series CERIS Working Paper with number
200515.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health L32 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Public Enterprises