This paper aims to examine whether private healthcare entrepreneurship can flourish and overcome obstacles in cases of a free-access public health system and periods of strict public policies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the paper aims to illuminate the wider social role of private healthcare entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This paper adopts a qualitative methodological strategy through 12 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the owners of diagnostic centres located in small Greek towns.
Private healthcare entrepreneurship flourished and played a significantly positive social role in the context of a degraded public health sector, which lacked investments for more than ten years and was further depleted by its recent focus on COVID-19 incidents. This paper reveals that although public policies that aimed to deal with COVID-19 produced serious consequences, business activity adapted to the new circumstances.
Future research can combine the findings of this paper with the views of stakeholders, policymakers and social actors.
This paper's value lies in its efforts to expand our current knowledge regarding the impact of COVID-19 public policies on entrepreneurship.
