Pre-COVID-19‑pandemic differentiation of employment and wages in county hospitals in Poland

The difficult current global situation in the aspect of Human Resources for Health was clearly seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. The spending on healthcare is still increasing and the rate of increase outpaces the growth rate of GDP. Only part of these funds is dedicated to the training of new staff and current healthcare employees migrate in search for better job conditions and worklife balance. Personnel migration combined with the demographic structure in the high-income countries simultaneously leads to increasing demand for healthcare services and limits the supply of specialists who can provide such services. The confrontation between the demand for medical personnel and its supply will lead to a reduction in the quality of care and accessibility of services. In the study based on the large group of Polish county hospitals in 2015–2018, differences and similarities between the hospitals in terms of employment, measured in full-time equivalents (FTEs) and in terms of wages were analyzed. Similarity and dissimilarity analysis was conducted, based on distance measures and cluster analysis. Bigger differences between the hospitals were found for wages than employment levels. The hospitals with an ED and efficient units were less similar to one another than their counterparts in terms of employment (FTEs), except for 2016. When it comes to wages and both types of variables (wages and employment) considered simultaneously, the hospitals with an ED and high number of beds were characterized by lower similarity to one another than their counterparts during the whole period. Clustering all the 3 approaches (FTEs, wages, FTEs and wages) the results were the same. One of these groups was characterized by a rather low employment level per bed, while the other one – by high.