Levels, economic savings and determinants of technical efficiency in public health centre III facilities in south western Uganda

Abstract

Basic to human welfare is good health and it is fundamental for socioeconomic development of any economy. Faced with resource constraints especially in the health sector, technical efficiency among the healthcare agents is a global concern to ensure proper utilization of the scarce resources to deliver good healthcare services to people. About 20 to 40 percent of the 7.5trillion US dollars spent on health sector globally is wasted to inefficiency (Xu et al., 2018). The general objective was to investigate the determinants of Technical Efficiency in public Health center (HCIII) facilities in South Western Uganda. The study was guided by three specific objectives namely (i) to estimate the TE scores among HCIII facilities, (ii) to establish the level of economic savings that can be achieved when technically inefficient facilities achieved technical efficiency and finally (iii) to examine the socioeconomic determinants of technical efficiency in HCIII facilities in South Western Uganda. The study uses a cross sectional descriptive research design with a sample of 30 public HCIII facilities in South Western Uganda. A Constant Returns to Scale (CRS) output-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique was adopted to estimate TE and slack values for economic savings while a Tobit regression second stage model was applied for the socioeconomic determinants of TE among various public HCIII facilities. Secondary data was obtained from Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), District Health Information System (DHIS) and District Planning Units for health inputs and outputs as well as socioeconomic characteristics of the population in South Western Uganda for the financial year 2020/21. The findings of the study reveal that 47 percent of the public HCIII facilities were technically efficient and the average TE score was 72 percent implying that the facilities need to improve resource utilization by 28 percent to become technically efficient. The study concludes that unemployment rate, infectious diseases patients, catchment population, patient population below 5 and above 65 years, urban location and competition were the significant determinants of TE for HCIII facilities in South Western Uganda. The study finally recommends reallocation of resources within facilities, increasing resources for facilities and improving social services facilities to improve on the technical efficiency levels for HCIII facilities in South Western Uganda.