[Spatial differentiation in financing medical services under universal health insurance selected segments of...

After the universal health insurance has been started in Poland, patients believed that access to the health care system financed by the sick fund could be improved. It is generally known that there is a kind of relationship between both the access to the health care system and quality of medical system, and amount of money to be paid for that. There are 17 separate and independent sick funds in Poland. In this work the authors try to find how sick funds spend their financial resources in selected segments of medical services. The strongest influence of sick fund is in the region where its headquarter is located. If each sick fund has different amount of money to spend for a single patient and the right to divide funds according to its policy, the authors expect regional differentiation in financing medical services (according to the district). The data used in the work came from Urzad Nadzoru nad Ubezpieczeniami Zdrowotnymi (UNUZ) and Główny Urzad Statystyczny (GUS). As a result their is no doubt that public money from the medical insurance is regionally significantly differentiated and each sick fund, spending money resources, creates its own medical policy in the examined segments of services.