Number of medical specialists in Poland 2017-2022

Due to the incomplete fulfillment of the statistical obligation by medical entities, especially professional practices, the data on people working with the patient may be lower than the actual state. Therefore, as a result of the methodological work carried out, data on doctors, dentists, nurses and midwives for 2019, 2020 and 2021 were estimated based solely on administrative sources. These data are incomparable with the data published earlier. A detailed algorithm for processing data for the above-mentioned occupations is presented below. The following administrative sources were used in the work on the algorithm used to estimate the number of doctors, dentists, nurses and midwives:
• List of Social Insurance Institution contributors (Social Insurance Institution),
• Register of entities performing medical activities (Ministry of Health),
• Registers of medical practices (Ministry of Health),
• List of entities with which the National Health Fund has signed a contract for the provision of medical services (National Health Fund),
• Central Register of Nurses and Midwives (General Chamber of Nurses and Midwives),
• Central Register of Doctors and Dentists (The Polish Chamber of Physicians and Dentists).
The works also used data files developed at the Central Statistical Office for the purposes of other statistical surveys, e.g. Base of Statistical Units, which allowed to avoid duplication of part of the work.