Journal Article

Abstract

Performance management in hospitals can help optimize healthcare delivery, efficient resource allocation, and sustainability, especially in the growing operational and environmental challenges. A comprehensive review of performance measurement tools and techniques in healthcare shows that among quantitative techniques, data envelopment analysis (DEA) has emerged as a widely used tool. DEA has emerged as a prominent method in recent literature due to its flexibility in handling multiple inputs and outputs, including both desirable and undesirable factors. This study applies a customized DEA model, capable of accounting for undesirable outputs, to evaluate the performance of hospitals participating in the OPIK project in 2023. The OPIK is an open, university-led benchmarking pool for technical managers of public hospitals in German-speaking countries. The study ranks these hospitals based on efficiency scores focused on CO2 emissions, an essential aspect of sustainability in healthcare facilities. The model ranks hospitals based on their efficiency and identifies benchmarks for inefficient hospitals. The results highlight the potential of DEA in addressing current challenges in healthcare performance management and contribute to the growing literature on healthcare performance evaluation.