Medical laboratories, as a part of the public healthcare network, offers services for which the extent of their need from users is as yet unknown. The scope of medical laboratory services is thus in the complete client's domain. However, medical laboratories can, at least partially, influence the consumption of their resources. Medical laboratories are currently facing a variety of challenges that restrict them in different domains such as staff shortages, investments and funds, resources etc. Despite these challenges, laboratories still want to provide quick and quality laboratory services. The non-optimal size of the process in a medical laboratory could be the main reason for inefficiency.
The purpose of the doctoral dissertation is to define optimal size of medical laboratories from the viewpoint of technical and economic efficiency. The impact of the consolidation of laboratory activity is defined by the differences in the efficiency of medical laboratories. By defining the Malmquist Productivity Index, it is possible to further define the impact of innovation on the efficiency of medical laboratories.
In the empirical part of the doctoral dissertation, twenty medical laboratories that perform all three groups of laboratory tests were analysed. In addition, twenty-one medical laboratories on the primary level of healthcare were also analysed. Two laboratories from abroad have been added to the analysis for the purpose of international comparison of efficiency. To analyse the efficiency, the data envelope analysis, i.e. DEA method, has been used.
The findings indicate that the inefficiencies caused by non-optimal laboratory size are up to 1.2 times higher than the process inefficiency. Consolidated laboratory activity is estimated as more efficient in our analysis. Management of ordering and consuming laboratory reagents and investing in laboratory equipment have proven to be essential for achieving the cost-efficiency of medical laboratories. In addition to that, it was found that the DEA method is not a satisfactory stand-alone efficiency indicator when evaluating the quality of laboratory work. This research thus contributes to the DEA research corpus in the healthcare area, which has not been addressed in this way as yet. The estimation of the optimal size of medical laboratories using the DEA method, taking into account operating models, is thus used for the first time in the case of medical laboratories.
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