The reforms of hospital management since the creation of the National Health Service were aimed in maximizing the efficiency of hospitals to make the sector more sustainable. Based on four experiences of management and integration of the NPM, a new reform of hospital management was created in 2002 that has continued until this day: the corporatization. To improve the way the resources are used, the tutelage also bet on the development of a politic of merge/ concentration of the health units.
The goal of the study is to analyse the behaviour and effects of corporatization in the efficiency of public hospitals, in the productivity of hospital centres (created from the merge of hospital units) and in the efficiency of the hospitals after the intervention of the austerity program. The analysis considered the time period between 2002 and 2013.
For this study, we started by using the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to asses efficiency, and then the Malmquist index for assessing the productivity of hospitals units and centres, based on the concepts of non-radial efficiency and super efficiency. In a second phase, aiming to determine the effects that be in the origin of the variation in efficiency, we conducted semi-structured interviews with managers/ directors of efficient and inefficient units, that were then analyzed trough the method of content analysis.
From the study of the 49 hospitals considered in the year 2002, we can conclude that: the efficiency in business units only began to increase starting from the year 2005 (which corresponds to the transition to the E.P.E. status); the policy of merging health units did not have the expected outcome in terms of productivity; external intervention ,although has generated increased efficiency of the units it has resulted, according to the interviewers, in significant losses in the health care provided to users of the NHS.