Economic Analysis of Portuguese Public Hospitals Through the Construction of Quality, Efficiency, Access, and Financial Related Composite Indicators

• Autor(a) principal: Matos, Rita
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Ferreira, Diogo, Pedro, M. Isabel
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/28684
• topic: Public hospitals · Economic and fnancial indicators · Composite indicators · Performance · Beneft of doubt

Hospitals consume most of the health systems’ fnancial resources. In Portugal, for instance, public hospitals represent more than half of the National Health Service debt and are decisive in their fnancial insufciency. Although proft is not the primary goal of hospitals, it is essential to guarantee their fnancial sustainability to ensure users’ health care and the necessary resources. An analysis of the existing literature shows that researches focus mainly on the hospital’s technical efciency. The literature has paid little or even no attention to the use of composite indicators in hospital benchmarking studies. This study uses the Beneft of Doubt methodology alongside recent data about Portuguese public hospitals (2013–2017) to understand the factors that contribute to low performance and high indebtedness levels. Our results suggest that hospitals perform better in terms of access (average score: 0.982). The group of criteria with the lowest performance was efciency and productivity (average score: 0.919), suggesting resources waste. Financial performance is, in general, higher than quality, raising social concerns about the way that public hospitals have been managed. Findings bring relevant implications. For example, the way hospitals are currently fnanced should consider efciency, productivity, quality, and access. Regulators should ensure that minimum performance levels are fulflled, applying preventive and corrective measures to avoid future low-performance levels. We suggest that hospital managers introduce satisfaction inquiries to improve quality. These improvements can attract more patients in the medium- or long-term; thus, our results are useful to citizens to make a better choice.