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Public health capacity in the provision of health care services

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Abstract

In this paper, we assess the capacity of Florida's public health departments. We achieve this by using bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) applied to Johansen's definition of capacity utilization. Our purpose in this paper is to measure if there is, theoretically, enough excess capacity available to handle a possible surge in the demand for primary care services especially after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act that includes provisions for expanded public health services. We measure subunit service availability using a comprehensive data source available for all 67 county health departments in the provision of diagnostic care and primary health care. In this research we aim to address two related research questions. First, we structure our analysis so as to fix budgets. This is based on the assumption that State spending on social and health services could be limited, but patient needs are not. Our second research question is that, given the dearth of primary care providers in Florida if budgets are allowed to vary is there enough medical labor to provide care to clients. Using a non-parametric approach, we also apply bootstrap** to the concept of plant capacity which adds to the productivity research. To preview our findings, we report that there exists excess plant capacity for patient treatment and care, but question whether resources may be better suited for more traditional types of public health services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Policy and Public Health, University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Vivian Valdmanis

  2. IESEG, Lille, Paris, France

    Vivian Valdmanis

  3. University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Arianna DeNicola

  4. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    Patrick Bernet

Authors
  1. Vivian Valdmanis
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  2. Arianna DeNicola
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  3. Patrick Bernet
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vivian Valdmanis.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Services provided by florida local health departments
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Valdmanis, V., DeNicola, A. & Bernet, P. Public health capacity in the provision of health care services. Health Care Manag Sci 18, 475–482 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-014-9277-z

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