Local resource reallocation considering practical feasibility: a centralized data envelopment analysis approach

Many studies have addressed resource allocation issues by using centralized data envelopment analysis models. However, few of them provided a local resource reallocation plan which may be carried out more easily. This article proposes two models to get such plans. The first one considers an acceptable percentage of changes in resources to ensure practical feasibility. The second one further considers a situation where resources can only be allowed to shift within specific units. The proposed models are applied to an empirical study based on a hospital system in Taiwan. To demonstrate the practical feasibility of the suggested plans, we compare our reallocation suggestions to a plan that can make the whole system be perfectly efficient. The main conclusion is that the plans derived from our models are more practically feasible than that with perfect efficiency.