Health, 2019, 11, 630-645
http://www.scirp.org/journal/health
ISSN Online: 1949-5005
ISSN Print: 1949-4998
DOI: 10.4236/health.2019.116053 June 5, 2019 630 Health
Evaluating the Efficiency and Determinants of
Efficiency of Rural Health Centers Situated in
Punjab, Pakistan
Yuelan Peng
1
, Muhammad Waqas Akbar
1
, Sofia Anwar
2
, Muhammad Hafeez
3
1
School of Public Finance and Economics Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Shanxi, China
2
Department of Economics, Government College University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan
3
School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China
Abstract
This study calculates the efficiency of Rural Health Centers (RHCs) and in-
vestigates the impact of other variables affecting the efficiency of RHCs. The
study considers 29 RHCs, 13 of District Faisalabad, 9 of Toba and 7 of Jhang;
a survey was conducted to collect data from each RHC for the year 2016. Data
Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model was utilized to get the scores for effi-
ciency. Thereafter, after getting the results from DEA Tobit regression was
used in the second stage. Out of the 29 Rural Health Centers, only 11 (38%)
are working efficiently as compare to others. Distance from the tehsil
headquarter, Distance from the road with “0” probability, Distance from
private hospital with “0” probability, Behavior of the staff with “0.0064”
probability and laboratory equipment’s with “0” probability, have an impact
on the efficiency scores. Distance from other health facilitators, Staff’s beha-
vior, list of medicine and equipment’s used at RHCs should be improved to
increase the efficiency of RHC’s.
Keywords
Rural Health Centers, Efficiency, Data Envelopment Analysis
1. Introduction
There is a consensus on the importance of health care all over the globe because
the healthy population plays a very important role in growing and in the devel-
opment of an economy [1]. To earn a long lasting return as a prosperity invest-
ment in the health sector is very important as a healthy labor force will increase
How to cite this paper: Peng, Y.L., Akbar,
M.W., Anwar, S. and Hafeez, M. (2019)
Evaluating the Efficiency and Determinants
of Efficiency of Rural Health Centers Si-
tuated in Punjab, Pakistan. Health, 11,
630-645.
https://doi.org/10.4236/health.2019.116053
Received: April 21, 2019
Accepted: June 2, 2019
Published: June 5, 2019
Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution International
License (CC BY 4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Open Access