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The reduction of government expenditure in the healthcare system, the difficulty of finding new sources of funding and the reduction in disposable income per capita are the most important problems of the healthcare system in Greece over the last decade. Therefore, studying the profitability of health structures is a crucial factor in making decisions about their solvency and corporate sustainability. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of economic liquidity, debt and business size on profitability for the Greek general hospitals (GHs) during the period 2016–2018.

Financial statements (balance sheets and income statements) of 84 general hospitals (GHs), 52 public and 32 private, over a three-year period (2016–2018), were analyzed. Spearman’s Rs correlation was carried out on two samples.

The results revealed that there is a positive relationship between the investigated determinants (liquidity, size) and profitability for both public and private GHs. It was also shown that debt has a negative effect on profitability only for private GHs.

Increasing the turnover of private hospitals through interventions such as expanding private health insurance and adopting modern financial management techniques in public hospitals would have a positive effect both on profitability and the efficient use of limited resources.

These results, in conjunction with the findings of the low profitability of private hospitals and the excess liquidity of public hospitals, can shape the appropriate framework to guide hospital administrators and government policymakers.

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.