earticle

영어

The purpose of the study is to verify the presence of congestion in the operations ofpublic hospitals in South Korea. Moreover, the differences in congestion and efficiencyamong the types(foundation type/treatment function) of public hospitals are analyzed. Todo these, a DEA model is developed and “the 2013 National Public Hospital Guidance”that was provided by the Public Health Support Unit of National Medical Center isutilized. For the DEA model of congestion and efficiency, the following five inputs areselected: number of doctors, number of nurses, number of medical technicians, number ofadministrative staffs and number of sick-beds. As for the outputs for the analyses ofcongestion and efficiency, number of hospitalized patients, number of outpatients andmedical profits are considered. The summary of the major results of the study is asfollows. First, we find that there are congestions in the operations of public hospitals. For eachinput, public hospitals generally show a high rate of congestion occurrence as well as alarge size of congestion in the operations. There are some differences in the congestionamong the foundation types of public hospitals. The national hospitals are found to havea larger occurrence rate and the size of congestion than the special corporate hospitalsand geriatric hospitals with respect to every input except for the number of medicaltechnicians. As for the types of treatment function, the special medical treatment-centric (diseases) hospitals are found to have a larger size of congestion than the general medicaltreatment-centric hospitals and elderly-specialized hospitals in all the inputs. Second, in the case of the differences in the efficiency among the foundation types ofpublic hospitals, the special corporate hospitals show the highest efficiency, followed bythe geriatric hospitals and the national hospitals. As for the types of treatment function,the general medical treatment-centric hospitals are found to have a higher degree ofefficiency than the elderly-specialized hospitals. The followings state the contributions of the study. First, in this research, thecongestion of public hospitals of South Korea is measured and the existence of thecongestion is verified for the first time by leveraging the congestion DEA model whichwould measure the special case of an inefficient situation. These results provide thepractical implication that could help determine the priority of management by comparingthe congestion for each input. Second, the differences in the efficiency among the types of foundation and treatmentfunction are also analyzed. This achievement helps to establish a foundation which couldenhance the understanding of the public hospitals by the environmental factors.