The aim of the article is to assess the private hospitals’ role and potential of development in the Polish health care system. Due to the general problem of lack of complex and good quality data on hospital sector functioning – the analyses are conducted based on fragmented data available from official statistics, regional sources and received from the Polish Association of Private Hospitals. In 2016, approx. 300 private hospitals existed in Poland which represented 15% of total number of beds. The number of beds in private hospitals increased between 2010 and 2016 by 26%, yet the main source of financing remains the contract with the public payer. In general, in the context of Polish hospital sector – diverse examples of public-private mix exists. Thus differentiating ‘private’ from ‘public’ requires application of three different criteria: the ownership (1), the sources of financing (2) and the style of management (3). The potential of development of private hospitals in Poland is highly influenced by system level regulations, including inter alia: the barriers to private health insurance expansion and the 2017 Law on hospital network.
