Exploring output quality targets in the provision of perinatal care in England using data envelopment analysis

This paper explores the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess units providing perinatal care in England and estimate performance targets for them. DEA is a modelling methodology for deriving the relative efficiency of units where there are multiple incommensurate inputs and outputs. The paper proposes a plausible set of inputs and outputs for perinatal care in which the output set incorporates both activity levels and quality measures. The incorporation of quality measures into the input–output set leads to a requirement for extensions to the basic DEA models to allow for weight restrictions and varying preferences over potential improvements to different quality measures. The paper illustrates the use of such models using realistic data on perinatal care provision in England.