Hospital Efficiency: An Empirical Analysis of District Hospitals and Grant-in-aid Hospitals in Gujarat

Abstract

This study focuses on analysing the hospital efficiency of district-level govern ment hospitals and grant-in-aid hospitals in Gujarat. The study attempts to provide an overview of the general status of the health care services provided by hospitals in the state of Gujarat in terms of their technical and allocative efficiency. One of the two thrusts behind addressing the issue of efficiency was to take stock of the state of health care services (in terms of efficiency) provided by grant-in-aid hospitals and district hospitals in this state. The motivation behind addressing the efficiency issue is to provide an empirical analysis of the government's policy to provide grants to not-for-profit institutions to ensure the provision of hospital care in the state. The study compares the efficiency of grant-in-aid hospitals and public hospitals. This comparison between grant-in-aid hospitals and district hospitals in terms of their efficiency has been of interest to many researchers in countries other than India, and no consensus has been reached so far as to which category is more efficient. The relative efficiency of government and the not-for- profit sectors has been reviewed in this article. It is expected that the findings of the study would be useful to evaluate this policy and help policy makers to develop benchmarks in providing grants to such institutions.