Assessment of the effectiveness of intensive care units: A case from a university hospital

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the intensive care units by using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and to identify the intensive care units to which ineffective care units should refer to be effective. The study also intends to describe the variances between intensive care units in terms of efficiency levels. The study used the annual statistical data of the Intensive Care Units of Gazi University Health Care Application and Research Center for 2018. The input variables include the number of physicians, nurses, the number of beds, the number of medical instruments whereas the number of hospitalized patients, the number of discharged patients, the number of patients who died, the bed occupancy rate and the bed turnover rate are utilized as output variables. BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper) DEA, CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) DEA and Super Performance models have been used to assess the effectiveness of intensive care. According to the findings obtained as a result of the analysis; Anesthesia and Reanimation Intensive Care Unit, Child Intensive Care Unit, Internal Medicine Intensive Care Unit and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit have not been found effective in both CCR and BCC DEA results. To increase their efficiency, it has been determined that the number of doctors should be reduced by one unit, the number of nurses by six units and the number of beds by two, the Child Intensive Care Unit by one unit, the number of nurses by one unit, and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit by four units in the Anesthesia and Reanimation Intensive Care Unit. Although according to the CCR DEA outcome, the Chest Surgery Intensive Care Unit was the super effective unit among the effective intensive care units, Intensive Care Unit for Cardiovascular Surgery comes out to be the super effective unit according to the BCC DEA. Also, the analysis reported variations between the intensive care units' effectiveness levels.