Revista Internacional de Economia e Ciências de Gestão

Measuring Efficiency of Reformed Public Hospitals in Saudi Arabia: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

Mohamed Said Abou El-Seoud

The study aims at investigating the efficiency of public hospitals that have been reformed to operate under private sector management of through the full operating system in KSA. The study applied Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) on the sample of reformed hospitals based on the ministry of health data for 2011. The study found that although the Saudi government achieved many positives results such as: attracting the excellence human resources, rising of the level of government health services, attracting national capital to the health sector, and reducing the administrative burden of the government sector, there are (60%) of the study sample had not achieved relative efficiency due to different reasons. The study concludes that health reform is complex, and requires policy consistency, stability, and government institutions with strong implementation capacity and government credibility. Public hospitals reform requires close coordination between policy design and implementation, and a matching of the scale and pace of reform to the capacity for implementation. Over time, through iterative evaluation, policy review and adjustment, KSA can identify what works best, and move to more consistent policies, standards of service delivery, and equity of access across its hospital system.