Health care efficiency measures

Health care efficiency measures compare delivery system outputs, such as physician visits, RVU's, or health outcomes, with inputs like cost, time, or material. Efficiency can be reported then as a ratio of outputs to inputs or a comparison to optimal productivity using stochastic frontier analysis or data envelopment analysis.

One difficulty in creating a generalized efficiency measure is comparability of outputs. For example, if hospital A discharges 100 people at an average cost of $8000, while hospital B discharges 100 at $7000, the presumption may be that B is more efficient, but hospital B may be discharging patients with poorer health that will require readmission and net higher costs to treat.

Outputs
Commercial efficiency measure outputs can be put into two broad categories: episodes of care, or population based care.