Productive performance and its components in Greek public hospitals

Health systems and services have globally received significant dimensions with the increasing use of human, material and economic resources. Given the attempts of convergence in health issues for EU countries, together with the increasing rate in their health expenditures, the concern is focused in restraining these expenditures through the productive operation of their services and their continuous assessment. This study evaluates the productive performance of 22 Greek public general hospitals for the period 2003–2005 and the changes that arise in efficiency and technology terms. Malmquist indices and data envelopment analysis have been employed to measure and decompose productivity while Tobit multivariate analysis is used to determine whether environmental factors affect the hospital’s productivity. The results suggest that productivity changes were dominated by the technical change component while hospital’s inefficiency was attributed to an excessive increase of their expenditures.