Measuring performance in primary care: econometric analysis and DEA

We use data from the Health Service Indicators database to compare different methods of measuring the performance of English Family Health Services Authorities (FHSAs) in providing primary care. A variety of regression and data envelopment analysis methods are compared as summary efficiency measures of individual FHSA performance. The correlation of the rankings of FHSAs across DEA and regression methods, across two years of data and across three different specifications of the technology of primary care are examined. Efficiency scores are highly correlated within variants of the two methods, and across years for a given method. Inter method correlations are smaller and correlations across different specifications of the primary care production process are negligible and sometime negative.