Technical efficiency of hospitals owned by faith based organisations in Kenya

The desired goal for Kenya's Vision 2030 and the millennium development goals are to provide efficient and reliable healthcare that will reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. Kenya's health care sector is among the most inefficient globally with high disease prevalence, high mortality rates, poor access to healthcare services and corruption. Hospitals owned by faith based organisations in Kenya play a key role in healthcare provision and contribute to about 40% of all private healthcare needs. This paper employs the Data Envelopment Analysis to unravel the technical efficiency of hospitals owned by faith based organisations in Kenya. Input orientation is adopted where the input variables are: medical officers, nurses, beds and cots and an aggregate of other hospital workers. The number of inpatients and outpatients recorded annually are considered as the output variables. Data obtained from the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Christian Health Association of Kenya, the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims and the Ministry of Health Master Facility List is used. Results indicate that 36.67 percent of faith based organized hospitals are inefficient. This paper concludes that if they would operate as a group, their technical efficiency would be 79 percent.