SPATIAL ACCESSIBILITY OF HEALTH CARE IN INDIANA

Eda Unal (), Susan Chen and Brigitte Waldorf ()
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Brigitte Waldorf: Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture, Purdue University

No 07-07, Working Papers from Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics

Abstract: Healthy populations and access to health care services are significant factors influencing economic development and prosperity. Since geographic access is an essential feature of an overall health system, it is important for health service researchers to develop accurate measures of physical access to health. In this paper we develop a series of gravity-based health care accessibility measures for all the counties in Indiana. The measures go beyond local availability of health care services within a county and account for travel impedance via distance-discounted health care services accessible throughout the state. When applied to Indiana counties, the results show sharp disparities in health care accessibility with extensive pockets of poor accessibility in rural and peripheral areas. The research concludes with a demonstration of how spatial accessibility measures can be beneficially used to evaluate of policies indicative of changes in the provision of health services.

Keywords: spatial accessibility; health care; geographic information systems (GIS) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-ias and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pae:wpaper:07-07

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