Assessing the performance of health units using a mix of efficiency indicators

Aim of this paper is to propose a methodology to assess the efficiency of a health unit in the delivery of hospitalization services. This task is accomplished integrating the hospital bed management indicators that provides an overall description of the use of beds by health structures with indicators of the complexity of the cases treated by the structure as well as its performance. This analysis has been applied in a case study based on the Italian healthcare services to compare the efficiency of the 21 Italian Local Authorities in the provision of hospitalization care services.