Efficiency of public spending on primary health care in the municipalities of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: robust scores and their determinants

Abstract Health services, the access to which is a right of all citizens and the duty of the state, must be efficiently provided, as public resources are scarce and there is a growing demand called for by the population. In this context, the objective was to evaluate the efficiency of public spending on Primary Health Care in the municipalities of Rio de Janeiro (n = 70) in 2015. Initially, the jackstrap procedure was used to identify possible outliers, and Data Envelopment Analysis was then applied to calculate robust efficiency scores. In the second stage, the efficiency scores were regressed into non-discretionary variables using the Tobit method, that may affect the efficiency of municipalities. The results show that 63.9% of municipalities efficiently applied ABS resources, however, given the expenses incurred, ABS outputs could have been, on average, 6% higher. In addition, no evidence was found that wealthier, more socially developed and/or populous municipalities, were more (or less) efficient in public spending on ABS than not.