Introduction
The health care industry has been undergoing tremendous transformation in the last three decades. These transformations have created both enormous opportunities and threats and at the same time, it has led into realization of creation of new organizations. Entrepreneurship is one of the opportunities that have resulted and drastically increased due to the changes in health care environment; indeed, it has become the best and effective strategic response to threats that are produced by the changes (Blair, 2007, p.130).
Discovering entrepreneur opportunity in health care generally requires individuals with relative adequate experience or information with the ability to recognize the availability of opportunity and thereafter device the means for exploiting the opportunity. In order to effectively exploit the identified opportunity in health care, an entrepreneur needs to understand the nature of the opportunity and develop orientation actions aimed at achieving the goals. Once the entrepreneur has outlined the opportunity, the next important thing is to evaluate costs and benefits of exploiting the opportunity. The nature of the opportunity is not just enough for an entrepreneur, but again certain key skills have been attributed to the success of most entrepreneurs irrespective of their fields. These characteristics include: propensity for risk taking, a tendency for positive self-efficacy and a high tolerance for ambiguity.
Positive aspects of entrepreneurship
The emergence of entrepreneurship in health care industry has seen both positive and negative effects being realized. For example, the positive aspects of entrepreneurship include: first, through entrepreneurship in health care industry, jobs have been created thereby absorbing a large number of professionals who would otherwise have been jobless.
Second, entrepreneurship in the industry has led to provision of health services in regions or areas that, in some way, public or few managed private facilities available would not have managed.
Third, entrepreneurship is closely associated with innovation and as a result, more cost-effective technology has been developed and enhanced which in turn has led to greater number of members in society to get access to key and vital health products or services.
Fourth, entrepreneurship in health care industry has also promoted competition among the health products and service providers and the positive results of this competition have translated to the patients who are largely the consumers of these products and services.
Fifth, assessing the wider role of entrepreneurs in any society, it can be concluded that, entrepreneurship in health care is necessary as it positively contributes to research and development in the field. For instance, Margaret Miller has estimated that 75 per cent of all innovations are credited to entrepreneurs (Miller, 2008) and without innovations then the world would be a boring place to inhabit.
Sixth, the prosperity of a nation is largely dependent on entrepreneurship and because health care sector has been regarded as the biggest industry in the nation and to the world at large, it can be concluded that more entrepreneurship ventures in the sector will greatly contribute to the growth of the wealth of the nation as well as for the individual entrepreneurs.
Finally, entrepreneurship provides self sufficiency. In health care sector, self sufficiency has been realized in greater and better standards to the professions employed. In addition, it has provided numerous growth opportunities to professionals working in the organizations and this has contributed to enhancement of happiness and liberty among many professionals in the field (Miller, 2008).
Negative side of entrepreneurship
There has not only been the positive side of entrepreneurship, but there have also been numerous negatives associated with entrepreneurship in health care industry. These negative aspects include:
- in the health care industry, entrepreneurship still attract little attention and this can be attributed to the existence of various barriers in form of structure and also culture in the health care sector. In a way these barriers have become a hindrance to new and aspiring entrepreneurs while at the same time, ‘suffocating’ and operating in disfavor of the existing entrepreneurs in the industry;
- entrepreneurship in health care sector is still faced by many problems that range from poor infrastructure, unstable economic climate, lack of government incentives and also poor managerial skills. These problems among entrepreneurs are escalated by inferior technology, sometimes due to poor capital, business and finance planning, lack of entrepreneurship development in the sector and generally presence of operational inefficiency in many entrepreneurship ventures;
- when analyzed from an economic point of view, entrepreneurships activities become less viable when one reviews the tax policies in the country. Primarily, marginal tax rates are still high and their movements downwards are unlikely – when marginal tax rates are high the rate of entrepreneurship remain relatively law and those who operate in such situations realize less returns;
- lastly, entrepreneurship spirit has led to instances where the quality of health care services has been compromised by professions out to rake in a lot of money. For example, comparing health care costs in three cities, McAllen, Texas and El Paso, Mandelbaum notes that, “McAllen has got more, surgery, more home care, more diagnostic testing, more hospital treatment, but more care does not equal better care” (Mandelbaum, 2009). The author traces this and calls it ‘overuse of medicine’ to which he associates to entrepreneurship spirit, which he describes as, “innovative and aggressive in finding ways to increase revenues from patient care” (Mandelbaum, 2009).
Philip Medical Systems
Philips Medical Systems Company is a diversified and well-being Company which has focused on making people’s lives better through modern innovations. The company has mainly invested in health care, lifestyle and lighting and it largely integrates technologies and designs into finding solutions to problems affecting people. The company has diverse range of independent experts, international professions for setting its agendas, policymakers and also opinion leaders who co-operate into finding solutions to health problems facing people and therefore work for improvement. Most innovations by the company focus on cost reduction especially in response to the fast-growing care expenses (Floren, 2008, p.293). The company has not just restricted itself to rich countries, it has progressively enhanced market of health care products and services in developing countries.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be suggested that changes in health care industry will continue to spur entrepreneurism spirit and therefore, it is necessary for the government and other key stakeholders to formulate policies that will be favorable to entrepreneurs. At the same time, health care sector has to improve on the various rules guiding entrepreneurship activities and to institute a vibrant culture that encourages entrepreneurship, which is guided by ethics.
References
Blair, J. D. (2007). Strategic Thinking & Entrepreneurial Action in the Health Care Industry. UK, Emerald Group Publishing. Web.
Floren, R. (2008).The Entrepreneur & the Entrepreneur Cycle. Netherlands, Uitgeverij Van Gorcum. Web.
Mandelbaum, R. (2009). When Entrepreneurship Hurts Health Care.The Entrepreneurial Agenda. Web.
Miller, M. (2008). Importance of entrepreneurship. Web.