Český finanční a účetní časopis 2020(1):27-39 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cfuc.542

Efficiency of Public Procurement in the Slovak Health Care

Juraj Nemec¹, Matúš Grega², Mária Horehájová², Matúš Kubák³

¹ Ekonomicko-správní fakulta, Masarykova Univerzita, Lipová 41a, 602 00 Brno

² Ekonomická fakulta, Univerzita Mateja Bela, Tajovského 10, 97401 Banská Bystrica, Slovensko

³ Ekonomická fakulta, Technická univerzita v Košiciach, Němcovej 32, 040 01 Košice, Slovensko

Increased efficiency of public procurement represents one of key factors of functional public finance. Slovak health care is the example of a service delivery area, suffering from permanent financial problems – improved public procurement would serve as one of tools to cope with them. The goal of this paper is to analyse the current situation of the public procurement in the Slovak health care system. We map both technical and allocative efficiency dimensions. The research sample represents all procurement cases of health care institutions in Slovakia for the period 2014 - 2019 (2141 cases). We also mapped in very detailed way all purchases of health technologies by Slovak hospitals in 2017 (11 cases). Our results mirror the core problems of the system. Efficiency is limited because of limited competitiveness (the potential of competition to achieve economy and efficiency is not utilised), because of the excessive use of the lowest price selection criterion and because of the fact that procurements are prepared without necessary ex-ante analysis of effectiveness of the planned purchase.

Keywords: Public Procurement; Helth care; Slovakia; Efficiency

JEL classification: D20, H32

Received: April 16, 2020; Revised: April 25, 2020; Accepted: April 26, 2020; Prepublished online: June 28, 2020; Published: June 29, 2020  Show citation