Assessing of the economies of scale and scope in th e Tunisian health sector

Abstract

In this paper, we attempt to estimate hospital marg inal’s costs and evaluate economies of scale as wel l as scope economies using a generalized multiproduct cost function.

In our esti mation we use a sample of Tunisian academic hospita ls with two categories, namely, general hospitals and specialized ones. Ela borating a separate evaluation of how the behaviour of different types of hospitals might be helpful particularly for a bette r resource allocation and a more efficient decision making relative to academic health institutions.
Eventually, one might well ded uce that, in the first place, the marginal cost per admission turns out to differ slightly with regard to both sets of hospital categ ories. Yet, the marginal cost per total ambulatory has shown a relatively greater difference compared to the marginal admission cost. In the second place, our results have led to the c onclusion that both sets of health care service organizations do not exhibit no ticeable differences regarding economies of scale. In addition, the empirical findings have also shown that economies of scope tu rn out to prevail predominantly within hospital hea lth care services in Tunisia throughout the study period, which is the subject o f our analysis.