Determinants of Healthcare Public Procurement in the Slovak Republic

The last decade is characterized by the greatest increase in the research activities and studies in the field of public procurement. Although the studies and research activities in public procurement are highly heterogeneous, their results reveal several unclear issues. OECD member countries spend on average 13% of their GDP on public procurement, that represents 29% of the total public spending. The innovation of public procurement is considered to be the most appropriate way on how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending. Despite the fact that there exist a variety of selection criteria (price, no-price), generally, the most used criterion for bid selection is price. Several factors influence the price. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship (whether it is positive or negative) between savings/overcharge and the number of offers in Slovak healthcare public procurement, using the generalized linear model and quantile regression analysis. The results show the evidence of the negative relation between explanatory variable (number of offers) and explained variable (final price as a % of the estimated price). As the percentage of overcharge increases, the effect of the number of offers on savings decreases.