Performance Efficiency Evaluation of European Countries Healthcare Systems during the Pandemic (Covid-19) Using the Data Envelopment Analysis

In this paper, a non-parametric method known as Data Envelopment Analysis was used to analyse the efficiency of the healthcare systems of 48 European countries in managing the covid-19 pandemic. Using the constant returns to scale model of Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) on input and output variables like total population, total covid-19 cases, total tests performed, total recoveries etc, the results showed that only 10 out of the 48 countries were optimally efficient in their management of the pandemic with some of the richest countries like France and Belgium being some of the poorest performers. Minimally developed countries like the Czech Republic, Andorra and Moldova were some of the best performers with Moldova being the most referenced optimal country in the benchmark test. It was shown that the inefficient countries like France and Belgium had to reduce the number of cases via distancing and lockdown measures to improve efficiency. The same goes for minimally efficient countries like the United Kingdom. The results finally indicate that developmental indices like gross domestic product (GDP) had an insignificant impact on the efficiency of countries in managing the pandemic as very rich countries were poor performers, although their high populations likely skewed the efficiency ratios in comparison to high performing countries with low populations. Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA, CCR, European, Countries, Healthcare, Efficiency, Gross Domestic Product, Total Population, Covid-19, Tests