A SBM-DEA based performance evaluation and optimization for social organizations participating in community and home-based elderly care services

PLoS One. 2021 Mar 17;16(3):e0248474. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248474. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

The community and home-based elderly care service system has been proved an effective pattern to mitigate the elderly care dilemma under the background of accelerating aging in China. In particular, the participation of social organizations in community and home-based elderly care service has powerfully fueled the multi-supply of elderly care. As the industry of the elderly care service is in the ascendant, the management lags behind, resulting in the waste of significant social resources. Therefore, performance evaluation is proposed to resolve this problem. However, a systematic framework for evaluating performance of community and home-based elderly care service centers (CECSCs) is absent. To overcome this limitation, the SBM-DEA model is introduced in this paper to evaluate the performance of CECSCs. 186 social organizations in Nanjing were employed as an empirical study to develop the systematic framework for performance evaluation. Through holistic analysis of previous studies and interviews with experts, a systematic framework with 33 indicators of six dimensions (i.e., financial management, hardware facilities, team building, service management, service object and organization construction) was developed. Then, Sensitivity Analysis is used to screen the direction of performance optimization and specific suggestions were put forward for government, industrial associations and CECSCs to implement. The empirical study shows the proposed framework using SBM-DEA and sensitivity analysis is viable for conducting performance evaluation and improvement of CECSCs, which is conducive to the sustainable development of CECSCs.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Aging
  • Benchmarking / methods*
  • China
  • Community Participation*
  • Health Services Needs and Demand / statistics & numerical data
  • Health Services for the Aged / organization & administration*
  • Health Services for the Aged / statistics & numerical data
  • Home Care Services / organization & administration*
  • Home Care Services / statistics & numerical data
  • Humans
  • Models, Statistical
  • Quality Improvement / organization & administration
  • Quality Improvement / statistics & numerical data
  • Social Support
  • Social Welfare*
  • Sustainable Development

Grants and funding

The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.71671042; receiver: Jingfeng Yuan), National Social Science Foundation of China (NO. 19CGL065; receiver: Wei Huang), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (receiver: Jingfeng Yuan). Both Yuan and Huang play a role in the study design, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.