The Comparative Study of Performances Before and After Hospital Merger：A Case of Municipal Hospital in Kaohsiung

• Main Authors: Yun-ting Huang, 黃韻庭
• Other Authors: Jeremy C. Ying
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44144498454950612498

碩士 === 義守大學 === 管理研究所碩士班 === 94 === Due to the drastic changes of Taiwan’s healthcare delivery system, such as, the implementations of national health insurance in 1995 and global budgeting system in 2002, hospitals are fortifying competitive advantages and expanding market share, or striving for survival barely. Thus, hospital merger was deemed as one of the major strategic resolutions. In January 2003, two Kaohsiung municipal hospitals were merged. The performance of this merged-hospital has not been evaluated yet. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been extensively applied in hospital performance evaluation (i.e., the ratio of outputs vs. inputs) by healthcare service organizations globally. Therefore, this study employed DEA method for the performance comparison between pre- and post-merger of the case hospital from an objective aspect. This study found trends of decrease in the numbers of outpatient and emergency care, expenses of prescribed medication, and numbers of physician; whereas, trends of increase in occupancy rate and inpatient days were identified. The trend analysis revealed the significant impacts of SARS outbreak and implementation of global budgeting system. The results of analyses of variance illustrated significant differences in terms of the numbers of outpatient and emergency care, expenses of prescribed medication, inpatient days, and numbers of physician among the years; but no significant differences were found in occupancy rate. In addition, low CRS, VRS and scale efficiency were found, except for the year of 2005. Finally, increasing return to sale was identified throughout the years, which indicated that scale expansion is desirable. In summary, the first year of the merger (2003) tended to have the worst performance, and productive efficiencies did not occur until 2005, which was the third year after the merger.