factors effective on technical efficiency and ranking of efficient units in social security hospitals

introduction: iran's social security organization provides hospital services through direct treatment system (hospitals owned by the organization) and indirect treatment system (purchasing of hospital services and other health care services from other providers). the current research aims to assess technical performance and determine the relationship between activity size and efficiency level of social security hospitals in iran. methods: this descriptive-analytical study was performed on 65 active social security hospitals that were selected for data envelopment analysis during the period of 2007–2009. in order to measure the technical efficiency of hospitals the input-output model and data envelopment analysis (dea) were used. furthermore, statistical tests were used to study the significance of the effect of activity scale on the efficiency level of the hospitals. results: about 28.5% of small scale social security hospitals and 16.2% of large scale social security hospitals were found to be working with full efficiency. statistical analysis showed a significant difference between the mean efficiency of small scale and large scale hospitals (sig. = 0.029). conclusion: it is expected that, through improvement of managerial techniques in efficient input use, the managerial inefficiency level be reduced by 6%, and a 5% increment be achieved in the output services scale of hospitals through the efficient use of existing resources.