Benchmarking of COVID-19 testing facilities: a case in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

PurposeWith the aggressive movement towards testing for COVID-19 across the globe, this study aims to shed light on how testing facilities perform in an operational perspective.Design/methodology/approachWith 102 testing facilities in the Philippines, the relative efficiencies of each facility are quantified using a data envelopment analysis technique. Afterwards, a best-worst method was conducted to assign priority weights to each testing facility.FindingsResults show that the proposed approach effectively prioritizes testing facilities that most likely have high utilization.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings in this study would be significant to the literature in a number of respects. For one, it reveals results that would stimulate the interest among scholars in a wide variety of disciplines such as management, data mining, policymaking, decision science and epidemiology, among others.Originality/valueThis study differs from previous works in a number of respects, particularly, in that to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relative efficiencies of COVID-19 testing facilities.