Production of health & healthcare - The healthcare production function and hospital efficiency

5 important questions on Production of health & healthcare - The healthcare production function and hospital efficiency

What are the four key questions about healthcare production?

  1. How to maximize the value of healthcare with the available scarce resources?
  2. Which factors (inputs) contribute to production of health care (output)?
  3. What is the marginal contribution of these inputs?
  4. What’s the optimal combination of these inputs in a given context?

What does the healthcare production function?

Measures the relationship between output in terms of patients treated or activities performed (e.g. admissions, hospital days) and healthcare inputs used:
Generally:
  • Q (quantity produced) = f (L(labour inputs), K(capital inputs))

What is the goal of the healthcare production function?

The goal is to maximize quantity given a budget restraint
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What is the cost function?

It describes the relationship between production costs and output levels at different input prices.

  • Cost functions describe the relationship between production costs and output levels at different input prices
    • è Short run: TC = f (Q, PL, PK) + Fixed costs
    • è Long run: TC = f (Q, PL, PK)
  • Average cost (AC) = TC / G (cost per unit of output)
  • Least-cost production: output at the minimum of the long run average cost (LRAC) curve

What difficulties are all hospitals faced with cost studies?

  1. Measuring output
    1. enormous heterogenity of products
    2. defining and measuring quality of care
  2. mearusing input and output prices
    1. lack of reliable measures
    2. lack of data on physicians' input prices

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