Human resources and efficiency: a study in Brazilian small hospitals

Abstract The paper examined the extent to which Human Resource Management (HRM) contributes to the performance of small Brazilian hospitals from an efficiency perspective. The literature review addressed efficiency to assess hospital performance by measuring the contribution of Human Resources (HR) in health and industrial organizations. The methodological pathway used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) on a sample of 702 hospitals from secondary data from census surveys with 2777 small hospitals. The central hypothesis of the study, that GRH contributes to the efficiency of hospitals, was confirmed by the results considering that this was the variable with the greatest need for improvement in the efficiency of small hospitals. Other variables were also relevant in the context of hospital efficiency, such as the influence of peculiarities regarding size (number of beds), legal nature of institutions and regional distribution.