Abstract

The principal aim of this paper is to critically assess the current situation of healthcare financing in the Western Balkan countries as it impacts the quality and performance of the system as a whole. This assessment shall be used to identify the current state of financing methods and quality of the healthcare sector in countries of Western Balkans. Specifically, by identifying the differences in financing healthcare sector among Western Balkan countries, this research paper measures the effect of financial means on the performance variables, as well as the relationship between the performance variables and the quality measurement variable i.e. life expectancy. These measurements were done using regression analysis through the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) methodology. The number of physicians and the number of nurses are considered as performance measurement variables due to their crucial role in the performance of the healthcare sector as it was previously determined in other research studies. According to regression analysis, the effect of financial means that a country dedicates to healthcare sector resulted to be statistically significant over the number of physicians operating in healthcare. On the other hand, according to the results that can be drawn by the regression model, the impact of financial means on the number of nurses resulted to be statistically insignificant. Regression analysis was also used in determining the impact of performance variables on life expectancy, used as a quality measurement variable. The model which tested for the relationship between the number of physicians and the number of nurses shows that at a 10% level of significance, both variables resulted to be statistically significant, showing that these variables are important in measuring the quality of healthcare. But at a 95% level of confidence the model shows that only the number of physicians is significant, whereas the number of nurses turns to be insignificant. Therefore, it can be said that the number of physicians is a crucial factor in determining the quality of healthcare in a specific country. Furthermore, the effect of healthcare infrastructure, specifically, the effect of bed ratio is also measured over the quality of the healthcare sector of a country. Considering that at a 95% level of confidence, the bed ratio variable resulted to be statistically significant, it can be concluded that more attention needs to be paid at the bed ratio variable as it plays an important role in determining the healthcare quality of a country.

Publication Date

4-26-2013

Document Type

Senior Project

Student Type

Undergraduate

Advisor

Edmond Muhaxheri

Advisor/Committee Member

Besnik Bislimi

Advisor/Committee Member

Lorraina Pinnell

Previous Versions

Nov 20 2017

Campus

American University in Kosovo

Download

Share

COinS