Efficiency of hospitals in the Czech Republic: Conditional efficiency approach.

This paper estimates the cost efficiency of 81 general hospitals in the Czech Republic during 2006-2010. We employ the conditional order-m approach to assess how inpatient costs in a hospital translate to inpatient outputs considering its environmental characteristics. The outputs include quantitative indicators such as (i) acute patients adjusted for DRG case-mix index, (ii) nursing patients, and (iii) publications reflecting research activity of a hospital; but also a qualitative indicator (iv) nurses/bed ratio. Nonprofit hospitals, university hospitals, and hospitals with specialized centers are generally less efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]