Comparative Analysis and Spatial Distribution of the Primary Health Care Centers and Health Manpower Across Saudi Arabia Using Shapiro-Wilk Test.

Background: Due to the growing demand for better health services by the population pressure, Saudi Arabia is facing challenges in providing the required coverage in primary health care over all regions.

Study objectives: The study aims to do a comparative analysis of the spatial distribution of the primary healthcare centers and health manpower across Saudi Arabia.

Study methods: This study deals with the analysis of the spatial distribution of the PHCCs and health manpower in Saudi Arabia regions during the period 2017-2021 by applying the Shapiro-Wilk test. This study relied on a dataset issued by the Ministry of Health (MoH). The variance of the spatial distribution of the dataset was also analyzed using the T-student and Binomial tests.

Results: This study found that PHCCs of 2020; the dentists of 2021; and Allied Health Personnel of 2017, 2020, and 2021 were normally distributed. However, the distribution of the population and all datasets of the other health indicators is a non-normal distribution. In addition, the correlation between the number of PHCCs and regions based on population is significant in all the regions. Moreover, The number of dentists showed a significant correlation with the population in most regions, except Riyadh, Makkah, and Jazan. However, the number of physicians, allied health personnel, nurses, and family medicine practitioners generally did not correlate significantly with the population, with exceptions for nurses in Tabuk and family medicine in the Northern Borders. Finally, the spatial distribution of the population shows the concentration in three major regions which are Riyadh, Makkah, and Eastern Province.

Conclusion: Despite the expansion in the number of PHCCs and health workers and spread in all regions of Saudi Arabia, their spatial distribution still requires the establishment of more of them to provide the basic health services necessary to cover the actual needs of the population.