An Empirical Assessment of the Technical Efficiency in some Selected Hospitals in Nigeria

Abstract

The desired goal for Nigeria’s Vision 2020 is to place Nigeria in the Human Development Index (HDI) ranking of not less than 80 by year 2020 and support a life expectancy of not less than 70 years. Nigeria’s HDI over the period under study has been among some of the poorest in the world. Attaining the above goals makes efficiency in health services delivery an indispensable panacea. The question of how the scarce resources allocated to the hospital sub-sector have been utilized and the need for resource optimization to maximize productivity by hospitals without increase in cost created the need to study the technical efficiency of Nigerian hospitals. The Data Envelopment Analysis procedure was used to compute the technical efficiency for each of the selected hospitals. Results showed that out of the twenty four sampled hospitals sixteen were technically inefficient. Of the technically efficient ones, the National Hospital Abuja had the highest peer count showing that it is the most technically efficient hospital among the sampled group. Thus, it became the benchmark for the “emulation culture” by the technically inefficient hospitals in the sample. In short, results showed prevalence of scale inefficiency which was attributed to technological inefficiency. It is therefore recommended that serious effort should be made by health policy makers and managers in the sampled Nigerian hospitals to ensure the adoption of an efficient technology that will optimize input-mix which will ensure technical efficiency.

Keywords: Technical Efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis