Benchmarking of COVID-19 testing facilities: a case in the Philippines

Abstract

Purpose With the aggressive movement towards testing for COVID-19 across the globe, this study aims to shed light on how testing facilities perform in an operational perspective. Design/methodology/approach With 102 testing facilities in the Philippines, the relative efficiencies of each facility are quantified using a data envelopment analysis technique. Afterwards, a best-worst method was conducted to assign priority weights to each testing facility. Findings Results show that the proposed approach effectively prioritizes testing facilities that most likely have high utilization. Research limitations/implications The findings in this study would be significant to the literature in a number of respects. For one, it reveals results that would stimulate the interest among scholars in a wide variety of disciplines such as management, data mining, policymaking, decision science and epidemiology, among others. Originality/value This study differs from previous works in a number of respects, particularly, in that to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relative efficiencies of COVID-19 testing facilities.