title: Profit efficiency and ownership of German hospitals.
abstract: This paper investigates the cost and profit efficiency of German hospitals and their variation with ownership type. It is motivated by the empirical finding that private (for-profit) hospitals - having been shown to be less cost efficient in the past - on average earn higher profits than public hospitals. We conduct a Stochastic Frontier Analysis on a multifaceted administrative German data set combined with the balance sheets of 541 hospitals of the years 2002-2006. The results show no significant differences in cost efficiency but higher profit efficiency of private than of publicly owned hospitals.
authors: RGS Econ, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, DICE, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany. annika.herr@dice.uni-duesseldorf.de
authors: Annika
authors: A
authors: Herr
authors: Hendrik
authors: H
authors: Schmitz
authors: Boris
authors: B
authors: Augurzky
mesh_terms: D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational / Q000191:economics*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D016304:Hospitals, Private / Q000191:economics*; D006779:Hospitals, Public / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010067:Ownership / Q000145:classification*; D013269:Stochastic Processes