Český finanční a účetní časopis 2021(1):23-35 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cfuc.553

Competition in public procurement in the Czech healthcare system and its impact on the final price

Mária Horehájová¹, Milan Křápek², Juraj Nemec^{1, 3}

¹ Univerzita Mateja Bela, Ekonomická fakulta, Tajovského 10, 974 01 Banská Bystrica, Slovensko

² AMBIS Praha, Lindnerova 575/1, 180 00 Praha 8

³ Masarykova Univerzita, Ekonomicko správní fakulta, Lipová 41a, 602 00 Brno

Due to the growing volume of public procurements in the Czech Republic every year, the topic of their quality setting and the achieved result is extremely relevant. One of the important qualitative criteria of public procurement (PP) is the degree of competition, which, as domestic and foreign studies show, affects the final, competitive price of PP. In our article, we focused on the relationship between the degree of competition and the achieved savings from PP in the Czech healthcare system in the period from 2014 to 2019. Our analysis confirmed a statistically significant inversely proportional relationship between the number of offers and the final price achieved through PP. A negative finding is the fact that the number of offers and thus the level of competition in the Czech healthcare system has been declining since 2014, which is related to the growing number of PPs with one offer.

Keywords: Public procurement; Healthcare; Competition; Savings

JEL classification: D20, H32

Received: February 19, 2021; Revised: March 13, 2021; Accepted: March 14, 2021; Prepublished online: June 8, 2021; Published: September 3, 2021  Show citation