An Analysis on the Utilization Efficiency of Health Care Service by Measuring the Technology Gap: The Efficiency Evaluation of Health Care Service

Since 1995, Taiwan implements the National Health Insurance (NHI) system that aims at enhancing the sufficient supply of health care service and reducing the barriers of hospitalization. Until now, approximately 99.7% of total population has been covered by NHI. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the utilization efficiency of health care service and to analyze the allocation equity of health care service. The different social characteristics across regions are incorporated into the efficiency estimation model that employs the meta-frontier Data Envelopment Analysis. Totally 25 counties in Taiwan that are divided into two subgroups according to the population density and the spatial difference are examined. Eventually, the Tobit regression model is employed to analyze the factors that affect the healthcare resource utilization efficiency. The result finds that the spatial inequality of healthcare resource allocation exists in Taiwan. Urban regions with higher population density are found to have more healthcare resource with less allocation efficiency.