Evaluating the efficiency of hospitals' emergency Departments During the COVID-۱۹ Pandemic Crisis in the presence of undesirable input in the DEA

One of the major concerns in healthcare management is the optimal allocation of staffing andresources. The global crisis created by the COVID-۱۹ Pandemic has created extreme strains bothon the staffing and the resources available to the healthcare systems. It has geometrically addedto the number of patients seeking health services. In addition, the Pandemic has dramaticallyincreased the rate of mortality at the hospitals in an unprecedented way. Therefore, in thisresearch, in order not to sacrifice the quality of the services provided, we have used DataEnvelopment Analysis (DEA) model to determine the efficiency of the emergency departmentsin the hospitals and the possible improvements that could be made to them. As traditional DEAmodels do not seek to reduce the undesirable outputs and increase the undesirable inputs, inaddition to determining the efficiency of decision units (DMU) despite some undesirable inputcomponents, the effect of these units (DMU) on performance is investigated. To this end,considering the problem assumptions, first, a set of proper production possibilities was defined.Finally, a new method was introduced to determine the system's performance in the presence ofsome undesirable input components in the decision units. The impact of undesirable componentson determining efficiency was specified, and a real example consisting of emergency rooms in۳۰ hospitals, in which five desirable inputs and four desirable outputs along with one undesirableinput were considered, was provided. The example was solved using the presented model, andthe efficiency score was determined.

Keywords:

COVID-۱۹ , DEA , Efficiency hospitals , Efficient Frontier , Undesirable input