The grouping results are shown in Table 1. The first group includes Hainan, Ningxia, Tibet, Qinghai and Tianjin. Except for Tianjin, which is a municipality directly under the Central Government of China, Ningxia, Qinghai and Tibet are all located in the west of China, while Hainan is located in the southernmost part of China. From the perspective of geographical location and historical development, the population in this region is small, and the GDP and economic level are at the backward level of China. The second group includes Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Chongqing, Fujian, Gansu, Anhui, Hubei, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Shanxi. The second group has a large number of regions. From the perspective of geographical location, it is mainly the northeast, central, southwest and northwest regions of China. The third group is Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, which are located on the east coast and the south coast of China. They are economically developed regions in China and the core provinces of the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. The fourth group is Shandong, Henan, Sichuan, Hebei and Hunan provinces, which are located near the central region of China. The fifth group is Beijing and Shanghai, which are also the first tier cities in China.
Table 2. Overview of total medical resources in Group 1.