Relative Efficiency of Iranian Health Sector among Some Islamic Countries

• Main Authors: E Hoseini Nasab, M Basakha
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: Iran University of Medical Sciences 2009-07-01
• Series: مدیریت سلامت
• Subjects: Health Expenditure; Efficiency; Data Envelopment Analysis
• Online Access: http://jha.iums.ac.ir/article-1-418-en.html
• ISSN: 2008-1200; 2008-1219

Introduction: Government Healthcare expenditure in many countries reaches to 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Efficiency of these expenditures is very important, and any change in this expenditure have notable effects on economic variables. Present study was aimed to estimate the ef- ficiency of Iran government healthcare expenditures among some Islamic countries. Methods: We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to measuring efficiency of health sector in 24 Islamic countries in period 2000-05. This method takes data on countries outputs and inputs, and measures the efficiency of a particular country by its distance from the ‘outer envelope’ of the data. Estimated efficiency score shows country’s efficiencies in expenditure transmuting to good health indicators. Results: Our findings shows that Standardized Death rate, Under Five Year Mortality rate, and Un- dernourishment Prevalence is main causes of Iranian health sector’s deficiency. Estimated overall ef- ficiency for Iranian health sector is 0.31 that point very low efficiency among other Islamic countries. Conclusion: Efficient health expenditure size for Iran is one third of current spending. DEA method specify full efficient units and denote for each country one or more references to improve its efficiency. To improve Iran healthcare expenditures we suggest Kyrgyzstan and Indonesia model.