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Article
Publication date: 14 May 2018

Mohammad Amin Bahrami, Sima Rafiei, Mahdieh Abedi and Roohollah Askari

As hospitals are the most costly service providers in every healthcare systems, special attention should be given to their performance in terms of resource allocation and…

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Abstract

Purpose

As hospitals are the most costly service providers in every healthcare systems, special attention should be given to their performance in terms of resource allocation and consumption. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate technical, allocative and economic efficiency in intensive care units (ICUs) of hospitals affiliated by Yazd University of Medical Sciences (YUMS) in 2015.

Design/methodology/approach

This was a descriptive, analytical study conducted in ICUs of seven training hospitals affiliated by YUMS using data envelopment analysis (DEA) in 2015. The number of physicians, nurses, active beds and equipment were regarded as input variables and bed occupancy rate, the number of discharged patients, economic information such as bed price and physicians’ fees were mentioned as output variables of the study. Available data from study variables were retrospectively gathered and analyzed through the Deap 2.1 software using the variable returns to scale methodology.

Findings

The study findings revealed the average scores of allocative, economic, technical, managerial and scale efficiency to be relatively 0.956, 0.866, 0.883, 0.89 and 0.913. Regarding to latter three types of efficiency, five hospitals had desirable performance.

Practical implications

Given that additional costs due to an extra number of manpower or unnecessary capital resources impose economic pressure on hospitals also the fact that reduction of surplus production plays a major role in reducing such expenditures in hospitals, it is suggested that departments with low efficiency reduce their input surpluses to achieve the optimal level of performance.

Originality/value

The authors applied a DEA approach to measure allocative, economic, technical, managerial and scale efficiency of under-study hospitals. This is a helpful linear programming method which acts as a powerful and understandable approach for comparative performance assessment in healthcare settings and a guidance for healthcare managers to improve their departments’ performance.

Details

International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, vol. 31 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0952-6862

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 18 April 2017

Roohollah Askari, Milad Shafii, Sima Rafiei, Mohammad Sadegh Abolhassani and Elaheh Salarikhah

Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is a practical tool to evaluate risks, discover failures in a proactive manner and propose corrective actions to reduce or eliminate…

816

Abstract

Purpose

Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is a practical tool to evaluate risks, discover failures in a proactive manner and propose corrective actions to reduce or eliminate potential risks. The purpose of this paper is to apply FMEA technique to examine the hazards associated with the process of service delivery in intensive care unit (ICU) of a tertiary hospital in Yazd, Iran.

Design/methodology/approach

This was a before-after study conducted between March 2013 and December 2014. By forming a FMEA team, all potential hazards associated with ICU services – their frequency and severity – were identified. Then risk priority number was calculated for each activity as an indicator representing high priority areas that need special attention and resource allocation.

Findings

Eight failure modes with highest priority scores including endotracheal tube defect, wrong placement of endotracheal tube, EVD interface, aspiration failure during suctioning, chest tube failure, tissue injury and deep vein thrombosis were selected for improvement. Findings affirmed that improvement strategies were generally satisfying and significantly decreased total failures.

Practical implications

Application of FMEA in ICUs proved to be effective in proactively decreasing the risk of failures and corrected the control measures up to acceptable levels in all eight areas of function.

Originality/value

Using a prospective risk assessment approach, such as FMEA, could be beneficial in dealing with potential failures through proposing preventive actions in a proactive manner. The method could be used as a tool for healthcare continuous quality improvement so that the method identifies both systemic and human errors, and offers practical advice to deal effectively with them.

Details

International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, vol. 30 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0952-6862

Keywords

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