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The Hospital Authority (HA) is a statutory body managing all the public hospitals and institutes in Hong Kong (HK). In recent decades, Hong Kong Hospital Authority (HKHA) has been making efforts to improve the healthcare services, but there still exist some problems like unfair resource allocation and poor management, as reported by the Hong Kong medical legislative committee. One critical consequence of these problems is low healthcare efficiency of hospitals, leading to low satisfaction among patients. Moreover, HKHA also suffers from the conflict between limited resource and growing demand. An effective evaluation of HA is important for resource planning and healthcare decision making. In this paper, we propose a two-phase method to evaluate HA efficiency for reducing healthcare expenditure and improving healthcare service. Specifically, in Phase I, we measure the HKHA efficiency changes from 2000 to 2013 by applying a novel DEA-Malmquist index with undesirable factors. In Phase II, we further explore the impact of some exogenous factors (e.g., population density) on HKHA efficiency by Tobit regression model. Empirical results show that there are significant differences between the efficiencies of different hospitals and clusters. In particular, it is found that the public hospital serving in a richer district has a relatively lower efficiency. To a certain extent, this reflects the socioeconomic reality in HK that people with better economic condition prefers receiving higher quality service from the private hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: In recent years, the government of the Philippines embarked upon an ambitious Universal Health Care program, underpinned by the rapid scale-up of subsidized insurance coverage for poor and vulnerable populations. With a view of reducing the stubbornly high maternal mortality rates in the country, the program has a strong focus on maternal health services and is supported by a national policy of universal facility-based delivery (FBD). In this study, we examine the impact that recent reforms expanding health insurance coverage have had on FBD. Results: Data from the most recent Philippines 2013 Demographic Health Survey was employed. This study applies quasi-experimental methods using propensity scores along with alternative matching techniques and weighted regression to control for self-selection and investigate the impact of health insurance on the utilization of FBD. Findings: Our findings reveal that the likelihood of FBD for women who are insured is between 5 to 10 percent higher than for those without insurance. The impact of health insurance is more pronounced amongst rural and poor women for whom insurance leads to a 9 to 11 per cent higher likelihood of FBD. Conclusions: We conclude that increasing health insurance coverage is likely to be an effective approach to increase women’s access to FBD. Our findings suggest that when such coverage is subsidized, as it is the case in the Philippines, women from poor and rural populations are likely to benefit the most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]