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Managing Cross-Border Care - An EU Health Systems’ Performance Perspective
LORENA ANDROUTSOU and THEODORE METAXAS
IJED, Vol. 12 No. 1,
(2018)
This study aims to measure the efficiency of 15 EU health systems when managing cross-border care. The study collected data across the years 2010-2014. The study used output-oriented and constant returns to scale Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with three input and three output variables. DEA model was performed for an across country efficiency comparison. A Tobit regression model was run in attempt to interpret the diachronic and cross-country efficiency scores and to achieve consistent and unbiased estimators.
The literature review focused on the EU policies and on DEA. The study used secondary data, gathered by World Health Organisation (WHO), Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Core Health Indicators (ECHI). The principal findings of this study were that 5 countries were found fully efficient throughout the 4 years and 10 countries were found relatively inefficient.
In meeting the needs of the patients seeking treatment abroad, the right administration and public health management aiming at advancing health systems efficiency should be acknowledged as a contribution to improve resilience of health systems and to the provision of higher quality cross-border healthcare.
Key Words
Efficiency, Cross Border Health, DEA
