Measuring Efficiency in Public Health: The Case of the Final Product System

In recent years healthcare systems have given an increasing emphasis to non-hospital services, like Public Health, in order to provide better care at lower cost. The available literature focuses on the use of quality measures but it does not provide sufficient attention to efficiency and cost measures. Further, while healthcare systems use the DRGs (or similar) system to monitor hospital activities they do not present any measurement system to monitor Public Health services. In fact, the large autonomy of professionals working in Public Health makes the identification of efficiency measures difficult. This paper presents the case of the Final Products systems designed to classify Public Health activities in an Italian region. It demonstrates that choosing adequate tools and implementation approaches can overcome the measurement difficulties of these services. Today, the system supports health authorities and regional government to increase efficiency and re-design processes to meet health needs. However, the implementation of similar systems should take into account the costs required in designing the system and should compare costs to potential benefits.