The nursing home industry has come under increasing pressure to contain costs and improve quality. We propose to develop a software product that will enable regulators, accreditors, insurers, or managers of chains to perform comparative evaluations of nursing homes. With this product, they will be able to use readily available cost, utilization, and quality data to identity the mot efficient and effective facilities and to establish benchmarks for best practice. The software product will be based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a mathematical technique for comparing """"""""decision-making units"""""""" using several performance measures. As a research tool, DEA has been applied to many industries, including nursing homes. However, we propose to make DEA an operational tool, accessible to people with no knowledge of the underlying technique, by packaging it as a software """"""""add-in"""""""" to a spreadsheet package. We propose to build a prototype of this product and use it to experiment with data from nursing homes in Massachusetts. Based on our results, we will develop a methodology to guide users in determining the best measures and analytical approach to use in their own evaluations. We will then incorporate this methodology into the deign and specifications of a full-fledged software product.
The proposed software product will be a valuable tool for anyone engaged in evaluation or management of groups of nursing homes. This would include operators of chains of nursing homes, accrediting agencies, stage public health agencies, and long term care insurers.
| Shimshak, Daniel G; Lenard, Melanie L; Klimberg, Ronald K (2009) Incorporating Quality into Data Envelopment Analysis of Nursing Home Performance: A Case Study. Omega 37:672-685 |
