The impact of health policy and technology on hospital productivity growth: evidence from Italy

The rapid increase in healthcare costs has drawn the attention of managers and policymakers towards regu-lating health expenditures: many countries have implemented deep reforms to improve efficiency and produc-tivity in the provision of health services. In Italy, the central government has introduced austerity measures,called recovery plans, to force the administrative regions to reduce healthcare deficits. In this study, we firstevaluate the impact of these recovery plans on hospitals’ productivity by calculating the Malmquist pro-ductivity index using data envelopment analysis. Next, we regress the obtained productivity index and itscomponents on a set of explanatory variables to capture the impact of the austerity measures, the moder-ating role of the regional organisational models, the variation in hospitals’ size and management autonomyand the capital intensity. The data used to estimate productivity were for an extensive period – from 2006 to2018. The results could contribute to assessing the increase in the productivity of hospitals and the influenceof government policies on the same.