In a fairly short period of time, data envelopment analysis (DEA) has grown into a powerful quantitative, analytical tool for measuring the relative performance of similar organizations. DEA has been successfully applied to traditional service industries such as universities and hospitals as well as to trades as diverse as banking and manufacturing. To the best of our knowledge, however, DEA has not been applied in the academic medicine healthcare setting. This paper discusses fundamental DEA models and some of their extensions, the arena into which we introduced DEA, and an example from our own institution exploring how DEA can advance the value proposition within an academic healthcare organization.
Academic Medical Centers Benchmarking