The article deals with changes in the human resources potential in the Russian health care system, which are the result of the reform of the medical sphere carried out in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, exposed significant shortcomings of the Russian healthcare reform, showing serious problems in the shortage of specialists, hospital beds, protective equipment, ventilators, tests, and medicines. The reduction of hospital beds and the number of infectious diseases doctors in order to increase the average salary in healthcare has led to the inability of the Russian healthcare system to cope with the spread of coronavirus infection without involving residents, professors, teachers and students of medical organizations. At the present stage of development, the issues of combating the spread of coronavirus infection, mobilization and professional training of medical workers are of particular relevance. Nevertheless, despite the results of the health care reform, which led to a massive reduction of medical organizations in our country, the number of doctors per 10,000 people in 2018 was 47.9 employees, over the past 20 years, has not changed much in the direction of reduction. In our view, we should not talk about a global reduction in human resources in healthcare. The existing personnel problems in healthcare are the low qualification of medical personnel and the General shortage of specialists in the labor market.