ABSTRACT

Health services are professional medical care and support services provided to protect and improve the health of individuals and treat diseases. Performance evaluation in health services allows for improving service quality and reducing costs. One of the most frequently used methods in performance evaluations is the measurement of technical efficiency score. Thanks to this measurement, countries can see whether their health system performance is effective or not, evaluate the efficiency of the resources allocated to health services and take relevant measures accordingly. The main objective of this study is to measure the technical efficiency of the health systems of 110 high-income and upper middle-income countries and to guide policymakers in formulating evidence-based health policies. Using the most recent secondary data of 110 high income and upper-middle-income countries obtained from the World Bank database, technical efficiency was evaluated by stochastic frontier analysis method. In the study, two different models are used in which technical scores are calculated separately using two different dependent variables, life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rate. In model 1, which uses life expectancy at birth, a total of 12 countries, Thailand and Japan being the most efficient, while in model 2, which uses infant mortality rate, the top three countries are  Singapore, Bahrain and Montenegro. Taking both scores into account, Bahrain, Singapore, Thailand, Japan and Korea rank in the top five in terms of productivity. The most inefficient countries are Turkmenistan, Dominica, Azerbaijan in model 1, and Nambia, South Africa and Nauru in model 2. When both models are considered, Nauru, Moldova, Turkmenistan, South Africa and Georgia are in the top five in the most inefficient country classification.