Do Primary Healthcare Facilities in More Remote Areas Provide More Medical Services? Spatial Evidence from Rural Western China

Chi Shen, Sha Lai, Qiwei Deng, Dan Cao, Dantong Zhao, Yaxin Zhao, Zhongliang Zhou, Wanyue Dong and Xi Chen

No 1309, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Primary healthcare institutions (PHIs) in China have experienced a sizable decline in medical services in recent years. Despite the large regional disparities in China, there is a lack of evidence on the differential patterns of medical services offered by PHIs, especially from a spatial perspective. This study examines whether residents in more remote areas use more medical services offered by township healthcare centers (THCs), a main type of PHIs. Linking medical visits to 923 THCs in a western Chinese province in 2020 with the driving time and geographic coordinates from the Gaode map, a leading map navigation provider in China, we applied a multilevel linear model and a geographically weighted regression to examine spatial heterogeneity in medical service utilization. We showed that a one-hour increase in the shortest driving time between THCs and the local county hospitals was associated with an average 6% increase in THCs outpatient visits and a 0.6% increase in THCs inpatient visits. Our findings suggest that THCs located in more remote areas provided more medical services, especially outpatient services.

Keywords: Primary healthcare institutions; Spatial remote; Medical Service; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-hea and nep-ure
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Working Paper: Do Primary Healthcare Facilities in More Remote Areas Provide More Medical Services? Spatial Evidence from Rural Western China (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1309

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