The challenge of competition and competitive strategies used by public health institutions in Kenya

Abstract

The essence of formulating competitive strategy is to relate a company to its business environment and enable it to cope with competition. Competitive strategy is therefore the bases on which an organization or a business unit might achieve an advantage in its market. This study focused on the challenges of competition in the health sector industry with emphasis on how the public health institutions are responding to these challenges in order to meet their goal of providing accessible, affordable quality health care services to its people. Previous scholars have concentrated on public health institutions and its health care financing but have overlooked the issue of competition and how the Public health hospitals are presently surviving to offer quality and affordable health services to their patients in the face of this competition. This study was designed to fill the gap by focusing on competition and how public health hospitals survive this competition to achieve their goals. The study sought to answer the following research questions: 1) what challenges do public health hospitals face from the private health sector, 2) Which competitive strategies have the public health hospitals adapted to counteract the private hospitals? This study was conducted between October, 2005 and April, 2006. The design of this study is a sample survey of public health hospitals in Kenya. The population of interest therefore includes all public health hospitals in Kenya. The sampling design (frame) included 1 national referral hospital, 2 provincial hospitals, 5 district hospitals and 4 health centres. This gives a total of 12 health institutions. Data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire comprising of 18 both openended and close-ended questions. Primary data was collected using an interview guide. IX The questionnaire was divided into three parts. Part A comprised general information; part B was comprised of questions that determines challenges from the environment and part C were questions on the strategies used by the public health hospitals to response to these challenges. Challenges were found to exist in the environment especially those from the private hospitals. It was also found that the public health hospitals deployed strategies to counteract these challenges. Both these were confirmed by mean scores of three and above and percentages of fifty and above.