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Rural vs urban hospital performance in a 'competitive' public health service

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  • Garcia-Lacalle, Javier
  • Martin, Emilio

Abstract

In some western countries, market-driven reforms to improve efficiency and quality have harmed the performance of some hospitals, occasionally leading to their closure, mostly in rural areas. This paper seeks to explore whether these reforms affect urban and rural hospitals differently in a European health service. Rural and urban hospital performance is compared taking into account their efficiency and perceived quality. The study is focused on the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) in Spain, which has implemented a freedom of hospital choice policy and a reimbursement system based on hospital performance. Data Envelopment Analysis, the Mann-Whitney U test and Multidimensional Scaling techniques are conducted for two years, 2003 and 2006. The results show that rural and urban hospitals perform similarly in the efficiency dimension, whereas rural hospitals perform significantly better than urban hospitals in the patient satisfaction dimension. When the two dimensions are considered jointly, some rural hospitals are found to be the best performers. As such, market-driven reforms do not necessary result in a difference in the performance of rural and urban hospitals.

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  • Garcia-Lacalle, Javier & Martin, Emilio, 2010. "Rural vs urban hospital performance in a 'competitive' public health service," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1131-1140, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:6:p:1131-1140
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    3. Mehmet Gok & Erkut Altındağ, 2015. "Analysis of the cost and efficiency relationship: experience in the Turkish pay for performance system," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(5), pages 459-469, June.
    4. Alicia Ramírez-Orellana & María del Carmen Valls Martínez & Mayra Soledad Grasso, 2021. "Using Higher-Order Constructs to Estimate Health-Disease Status: The Effect of Health System Performance and Sustainability," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-23, May.
    5. Adabavazeh, Nazila & Nikbakht, Mehrdad & Tirkolaee, Erfan Babaee, 2023. "Identifying and prioritizing resilient health system units to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    6. Lu, Liyong & Pan, Jay, 2019. "The association of hospital competition with inpatient costs of stroke: Evidence from China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 234-245.
    7. Monica Giancotti & Annamaria Guglielmo & Marianna Mauro, 2017. "Efficiency and optimal size of hospitals: Results of a systematic search," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-40, March.
    8. Cinaroglu, Songul, 2021. "Changes in hospital efficiency and size: An integrated propensity score matching with data envelopment analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    9. George Fragkiadakis & Michael Doumpos & Constantin Zopounidis & Christophe Germain, 2016. "Operational and economic efficiency analysis of public hospitals in Greece," Post-Print hal-01414677, HAL.
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