Public Hospitals Performance Measurement through a Three-Staged Data Envelopment Analysis Approach: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

This study proposes a three-staged approach to data envelopment analysis (DEA) modeling for hospital efficiency. The aims overcome the constraint on number of inputs/outputs relative DMUs. Initially, principal components all inputs and outputs are determined using component (PCA). Next, these enter factor (FA) process construct two-level hierarchy establish weighting scheme based explained variances components. Finally, DEA (TLDEA) method is applied resultant framework determine efficiency hospitals from healthcare context Iran as an emerging economy. outcomes applying proposed PCA-FA-TLDEA argued offer substantial increase in discriminatory power classical methods could incorporate relatively large set already existing literature. As demonstrated evaluated hospitals, methodology improved discrimination 0% original 45%. paper novel three-stage model by PCA extract outputs; therefore, reducing their inter-correlations. Secondly, FA constructed. TLDEA evaluate performance public hospitals.