Assessing the Accessibility of Home-Based Healthcare Services for the Elderly: A Case from Shaanxi Province, China

Xiaodong Di, Lijian Wang, Xiuliang Dai and Liu Yang
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Xiaodong Di: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No 28 Xianning West Road, Xi’an 710049, Shaanxi, China
Lijian Wang: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No 28 Xianning West Road, Xi’an 710049, Shaanxi, China
Xiuliang Dai: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No 28 Xianning West Road, Xi’an 710049, Shaanxi, China
Liu Yang: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No 28 Xianning West Road, Xi’an 710049, Shaanxi, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 19, 1-16

Abstract: With the rapid increase of the elderly population in China, healthcare services for the elderly have gradually become an important welfare resource. However, the healthcare service for the elderly still has problems such as mismatched supply and demand and unbalanced resources. In order to effectively eliminate the path barriers to match supply and demand, and improve the accessibility of healthcare services, this paper introduces the sustainability of the healthcare service based on the accessibility theory, and constructs an index system from the three dimensions of potential accessibility, realized accessibility, and sustainable accessibility of healthcare services for the elderly. Then, the paper makes a practice application of the index system based on survey data of healthcare services from Shaanxi province, China. Finally, the paper finds that the total accessibility and sustainable accessibility of healthcare services for the elderly in Shaanxi Province are at an average level. The score of potential accessibility is high, indicating that elderly people have greater opportunities to use healthcare services. The realized accessibility score is low, which indicates that the actual use of healthcare services for the elderly presents low satisfaction.

Keywords: healthcare service for the elderly; accessibility; index system; principal component analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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