Pabon Lasso Model in a 5-Year PeriodEvaluation of the Efficiency of Tabriz Hospitals; Using the
Javad Qodoosinejad 1, Amin Daemi 2, Mohammad Saadati 3, Rouhollah Yaghoubi 4*
1 Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran
2 Department of Health Services Management, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Health Services Management, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4 School of Health Services Management, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
A R T I C L E I N F O |
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A B S T R A C T |
Article History:
Received: 3 July 2017
Revised: 8 Aug 2017
Accepted: 5 Sep 2017 |
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Background: Hospitals are the largest and most costly operating units of health systems, and their share of current government expenditures in the healthcare sector is between 50 and 80 percent. The hospital efficiency is more indicative of the proper function of the resources devoted to it. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of hospitals in Tabriz by using the Pabon Lasso model.
Methods: This is a descriptive study that investigated the efficiency of Tabriz hospitals during 2009-2013. All hospitals of Tabriz were entered by census. Data (bed occupancy rate, bed turnover and patient length of stay) were collected in summer 2014 and charts were plotted using SPSS 19 software.
Results: The mean of Pabon Lasso's three indices of efficiency in 5 years (excluding psychiatric beds) was 67.6% for bed occupancy rate, 104.3 times bed turnover, and 2.48 days average patient length of stay. The coefficient of bed occupancy increased by 3% over 5 years, the bed turnover index increased by 8 times and the average length of stay decreased by 0.17 day. On average, 25.2% of hospitals were in Region 1, 23.5% in Region 2, 26.1% in Region 3 and 25.2% in Region 4 of Pabon Lasso Diagram.
Conclusion: The presence of 26% of hospitals in the region of Pabon Lasso Diagram shows the effective efficiency of hospitals which is not an acceptable statistics for hospitals and requires the intervention of health practitioners and policymakers.
Keywords: Pabon Lasso, Efficiency, Hospital |
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*Corresponding Author:
Rouhollah Yaghoubi
School of Health Services Management, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Mollasadra st., Baqiyatallah University, Tehran, Iran.
Email:
yaghoobi.ru@gmail.com
Tel:
+98-9149975349 |
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Citation : This paper should be cited as: Qodoosinejad J, Daemi A, Saadati M, Yaghoubi R. Evaluation of the Efficiency of Tabriz Hospitals; Using the Pabon Lasso Model in a 5-Year Period. Evidence Based Health Policy, Management & Economics. 2017; 1(3): 151-7.
Introduction
Over the last decade, the health sector in most countries has faced a significant increase in health care costs and in particular, rise in hospital costs (1). Hospitals, as one of the most important community health centers, are also the largest and most costly operational units of these centers. It accounts for 50 to 80% of government expenditure in the health sector, and in other statistics, based on WHO report, in third world countries, half of the national cost is spent on these centers (2-5).
Moreover, by spending these huge resources in these institutions, their efficiency must be carefully measured. One of the ways to accurately measure efficiency is to adapt to standards (6). Hospital efficiency standards can be evaluated in different aspects, such as quality, efficiency, productivity and accessibility (7). One of the models that is currently used considering the necessity of observing the principle of productivity in the optimal use of resources is efficiency evaluation using hospital efficiency indices (8). Efficiency in brief means maximizing the use of resources to generate returns. In order to determine the efficiency or inefficiency of each firm, appropriate indicator or indices should be used as a criterion (9). The most important and most effective indices of efficiency measurement are bed occupancy rate, bed turnover, and the average length of stay (10, 11). The criteria defined for the above indices by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran fall into three levels: desirable, moderate and undesirable (12). Based on the I.R.Iran budget organization of 2002, approximately 300 billion Rials are wasted annually for unused hospital beds, which according to the calculations of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has 9 times the value in the year 2016 (base on inflation). This is why many patients cannot be admitted due to lack of access to a hospital rbed or for other
reasons (6, 13).
One of the useful ways to evaluate the efficiency of the three above-mentioned indices is to use the Pabon Lasso model. This model was introduced in 1986 by Pabon Lasso and was used to evaluate the efficiency of hospitals (14). The benefits of using the Pabon Lasso model include the rapid identification of poorly functioning health centers, the identification of regions requiring improvement, and the identification of useful strategies to improve the efficiency of health centers (15). In this model, hospitals are located in four regions; each region represents the type of efficiency and resource efficiency according to the type of hospital expertise.
Based on the Pabon Lasso model, the status of the health centers in each of the four regions and the interpretation of each region is as follows:
Region 1 (Southwest side of the chart): Low bed occupancy rate and low bed turnover rate, this feature is specific to centers where bed supply is more than demand for health care.
Region 2 (northwestern side of the chart): Low bed occupancy rate and high bed turnover rate indicate the unnecessary hospitalization of patients and the extra bed capacity in health centers (characteristics of Obstetrics and Gynecology departments).
Region 3 (Northeastern side of the chart): High bed occupancy rate and high bed rate, these centers have a good efficiency despite the use of the minimum number of beds. Region 4 (Southeast side of the chart): High bed occupancy rate and low bed turnover rates indicate long-term hospitalization, low utilization of outpatient facilities and high costs (characteristics of psychiatric and elderly care centers).
Due to lack of a similar study in Tabriz and the importance of these indices in improving the behavior of managers in the allocation and utilization of resources as well as country studies, generally carried out using one-year data (14, 16-20), this study was conducted to investigate the efficiency of hospitals in Tabriz during the 5-year period from 2009-2013.
Materials and Methods
This is a descriptive and retrospective study conducted in 2014. Sampling was done in a census that included all 21 hospitals in Tabriz (11 university hospitals and 10 non-university hospitals). The study data covers the five year period from 2009 to 2013. The Pabon Lasso model was used to evaluate the efficiency of health centers in this study. In this model, the horizontal axis chart shows the percentage of bed occupancy and the vertical axis represents the bed turnover rate and the parallel axis with these two (vertical and horizontal axes) represents the length of stay. Therefore, a point on parallel axes by a line drawn from the origin of the coordinates and the point obtained from the two available indices indicate the average length of stay, and this value is increased uniformly from left to right and up to down (21).
The aim of this study was to measure the efficacy of hospitals affiliated with Tabriz University of Medical Sciences using the Pabon Lasso chart. Indices required to evaluate the efficiency of health centers were obtained by a questionnaire based on the indices of the Ministry of Health and through the treatment Deputy of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (12). SPSS19 software was used for data analysis and illustrate the Pabon Lasso chart.
In addition, the declaration of Helsinki was considered for ethical issues.
Results
Among the 21 hospitals studied, the efficiency indices including the average percentage of bed occupancy, the average bed turnover, and the average length of stay within 5 years (including psychiatric hospitals and without it) are presented in Table 1.
According to the results, during the 5 years of investigation, the distribution of hospitals studied in the 4 regions of Pabon Lasso is described in Table 2 and Figure 1.