The Relative Efficiency of the Health Sector in Saudi Arabia: A Data Envelopment Analysis

This study evaluated the efficiency of primary health care centers and government hospitals in Saudi Arabia by measuring their productive efficiency via data envelopment analysis.Four inputs and three outputs from the primary health care database and four inputs and four outputs from the government hospital database were subjected to the analysis.The period examined spanned 2014 to 2019, and the data covered 20 regions.The constant returns to scale and variable returns to scale models showed that there were four (20%) and six (30%) regions with efficient primary health care centers, respectively.For government hospitals, however, the number of such regions was seven (35%) and 10 (50%), respectively.The findings confirmed that government hospitals are more efficient than primary health care centers.The inefficient regions could benefit from these findings to compare their system and performance considering the efficient regions within their capacity and geographic location.