Public/Private Competition

Part of the services that our Hospital do provide is the provision of medical services during mass gathering events including sports competitions, heritage events, musical concerts, etc.

During such events there is a need to have a medical team that can respond to medical emergencies and can transfer the patients to the nearest treating facility available.
The components of the above-mentioned services usually consist of a medical team of a combination between paramedics, EMTs, nurses, and doctors “ as manpower requirements”, medical tents or medical mobile units “as medical units”, ambulances, and first response cars “ as medical vehicles”.

The police in the county do provide the same services and do charge a fee for service to the clients, at the same time the police are the regulator of the EMS services in the county and we do have to get approvals from them whenever we need to register new paramedics or new ambulances. (the police EMS is the regulator and service provider as well).

This part of our services occupies around 3% of the whole business so its not that much but still the margin of such services is on a higher side as a high as 40% and such events are usually attended by thousands of crowds and are broadcasted via TV channels around the world, so those events can make an important impact marketing wise and the name of the company can reach to lot of people and end users.

The question here is: we are familiar with such competition scenario between private and public providers, however; do we have to stop providing such services and let the police to handle them? Actually, this situation has created a kind of in comfort in the relation between our company and the police” the regulator”, or shall we continue the provision of the same services as sooner or later we might be in a face to face competition with the police for bigger services in the county and will be forced to compete directly with them again?


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4 thoughts on “Public/Private Competition

  1. Just to clarify, is your hospital a public or private organisation?
    How do the police provide the services? (do they subcontract their own health professionals?)
    Can you come up with a win-win and the police cub-contract your organisation? (I am thinking of our last few lectures in March where we discussed that sometimes the struggles of a negotiation become that focus, when we should be focussing on value creation).

    1. thanks for your comment, we are private hospital and police provide the service in-house.

  2. Leveraging your current good relationship appears to make sense. Consider offering and expanding services that your organization does better at the events. Work on adding value to areas that they cannot/ do not want to compete on. Demonstrate your expertise so they will not want to continue to expand into other sectors. Planning meetings and good communication of any proposed changes of service provision at the event will be important for your success.

  3. If you are looking at these large events more as a marketing opportunity, you could consider dropping down the prices significantly (you have a 40% cushion). Maybe have dialogue with the police and tell them that you want to do the events as a social responsibility and are not looking at it from a business perspective. The police can free up their resources for other needs.

    Free marketing and visibility is in itself a huge gain. So try sacrificing margin on the actual delivery of services and position the whole activity as a CSR initiative. The police might not resent you and could in fact even cooperate.

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