Evaluating the Economic Efficiency of Radiology Units in General Hospital's of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in 2012, using Data Envelopment Analysis

One of the appropriate tools in performance measurement of Radiology units is measuring the technical, allocative and economic efficiency. This factor has been analyzed in the current study for Shiraz hospitals. In this study, output data which includes radiographs (either outpatient or inpatient) and number of admitted patients in radiology departments of related hospitals; and input data which includes information regarding expert personnel, technicians and number of medical radiology equipment and finally, the variable of price that is related to radiology staff salaries and medical equipment prices; was collected. The research population and sample in this study were the general hospitals of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and all radiology units of these hospitals, respectively. After data collection, the data was analyzed using Deap software and the different types of efficiency were calculated. The findings show that the average scores of the economic efficiency were around 0.749.This value is lower than the scores of technical efficiency and allocative efficiency. About 15 percent of the radiology units have been efficient in terms of economic efficiency. Also, 21 Radiology units have had increasing returns to scale and 6 units had constant returns to scale. Considering that 75% of radiologoy departments have been economically inefficicent, it is necessary for authorities to consider allocating optimum resources according to the price of radiology equipment and input costs.