An Assessment Of Operational Efficiency Of Old-age Care Institutions In Tai'an

Since China has entered an aging society,there has been a growing concern about the daily life and requirement of old man.On the one hand,the government adopted a series of measures to encourage all localities to set up old-age care institutions and push social model of old-age pension,on the other hand,both the number and scale of social old-age care institutions have shown a rapid development trend.Tai'an's aging-related undertaking started late,there is a greater developmental space for improving old-age care institutions' quantity,size and service.However,the old-age enterprise in Tai'an started late,and there are some problems in the old-age institution,especially the Operational efficiency of the nursing home is not high enough to meet the elderly's needs for the aged,which affects the sustainable development of the old-age care institutions in Tai'an.Therefore,it is meaningful to study the operation efficiency of the old-age care institutions and make them serve the elderly more effectively.Based on literature search and field survey,this study investigated the operation of old-age care institutions in Tai'an.In this study,DEA is used to analyze the overall efficiency and of the sample data of the old-age care institutions.Tobit model is used to analyze the factors that influence the operation efficiency.The following main conclusions are obtained through analysis and research :(1)Tai'an old-age care institutions develop rapidly recent years,the number of old-age care institutions is increasing.However,the elderly who live in pension institutions account for only about 1.6% of the elderly population,besides,the elderly who live in old-age care institutions are generally older and in poor physical condition.Also,nursing home themselves have many problems.Their employees' professional quality is relatively low and the operation of the organizations are in state of loss,etc.(2)This paper selects the data envelopment analysis(DEA)to study the operating efficiency and the influencing factors of the old-age care institutions in Tai'an.Determines two input indicators,namely the number of bed and the number of employees,and the three output indexes:the number of old people living in old-age care institutions,the number of old people who are requiring assistance in daily life in old-age care institutions and the number of oldpeople who are totally dependent in daily life in old-age care institutions.(3)Through the DEA calculation,it is found that the overall operating efficiency of the Tai'an nursing home is relatively general,and the mean of their comprehensive efficiency is only 0.653,which indicates that the operating efficiency of is generally low;The average of pure technical efficiency is 0.862,which indicates that the old-age care institutions in Tai'an are still available in terms of staff management;The average of scale efficiency is 0.748,indicating that Tai'an's old-age care institutions need further improvement in controlling the number of beds.As for the development stage,most of the old-age care institutions in Tai'an are in the stage of increasing returns to scale.(4)According to the different nature,the old-age care institutions in Tai'an are divided into public ones and private ones,and then compared theire efficiency.The performance of public old-age care institutions in Tai'an is better than that of private old-age care institutions from the mean and standard deviation of the comprehensive efficiency.According to the scale,the old-age care institutions in Tai'an are divided into three categories: small,medium-sized and large.We found that medium-sized old-age care institutions have better operation efficiency than the other two kinds of ones,followed by small old-age care institutions,and the largest old-age care institutions have the lowest operation efficiency.Qualification of employees and the floor area of the nursing home are two important factors that influence the efficiency.The more professional service providers in nursing home and smaller the floor area is,the efficiency of nursing home is higher.(5)Tai'an's old-age care institutions need to be improved at multiple levels.The government should give energetic financial support,establish and perfect the relevant laws and regulations,actively encourage the cultivation of qualified service clerk for the provision of old-age care services.old-age care institutions them-self should rationally control their size,draw lessons from other regions,highlight their own characteristics,at the same time,focus on improving the service quality of institutional managers and staff.In the society we should strengthen the cognition and propaganda to the institution pension pattern,guide citizens to participate in volunteer activities and endowment career.