Determinants of Public Healthcare Units Indebtedness – the Case of Public Hospitals in Lodz
The performance of healthcare in Poland, compared with the EU countries, is far from satisfactory. The indebtedness of hospitals is one of the major problems to be solved by public administration. Hospitals as autonomous healthcare units are public units and are not subject to market mechanisms. Legal regulations widely determine their independence but limit responsibility for its implementation, which leads to their uncontrolled indebtedness. That indebtedness adversely affects not only the development of healthcare but also quality of provided medical services. Constant indebtedness of the units creates a need for finding its determinants. The aim of the research is an attempt to define some factors which determine indebtedness of public healthcare units (hospitals) in Poland. The study will cover units with a similar and thus comparable profile. The study was conducted between years 2007 – 2015 with help of econometric modeling. It should be stressed that the level of indebtedness of healthcare units, and at the same time, the efficiency of their performance vary. Based on preliminary research on determinants of indebtedness there should be mentioned the following most crucial factors: hiring medical personnel, average remuneration, bed occupancy, average stay in hospital, average number of patients per bed, days of treatment per person, founders.
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