Evaluating the efficiency of China’s healthcare service: A weighted DEA-game theory in a competitive environment

In the field of healthcare industries, reasonable and sound resource allocation, as well as its well-balanced distribution do not impose any encumbrance on a society's healthcare system, preventing negative effects induced by cost-ineffective therapies as well as resource-consuming treatments, upon which the key motivations of our research is constituted. We establish an ingenious and effective model by combining weighted Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and game theory to improve the quality and management of the healthcare. First, we aim to divide the decision-making units (DMUs) into group with homogeneity by k-means and canopy algorithm. Then, a model based on the weighted DEA-game theory is built to evaluate the healthcare service efficiency of each cluster. Last but not least, an empirical study is accordingly conducted. Analytical results show that our method outperforms the traditional DEA, throughout which three advantageous findings are therefore summarized as the key contributions of our research in terms of imbalance, healthcare service efficiency and its performance in coastal areas, thereby offering corresponding guidance and suggestions.