Evaluating the Spatial Accessibility and Distribution Balance of Multi-Level Medical Service Facilities

Meihan Jin, Lu Liu, Tong De, Yongxi Gong and Yu Liu
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Meihan Jin: Laboratory for Urban Future, Peking University (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518055, China
Lu Liu: Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Urban Planning and Decision Making, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518055, China
Tong De: School of urban planning and design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China
Yongxi Gong: Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Urban Planning and Decision Making, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen 518055, China
Yu Liu: Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: Public medical service facilities are among the most basic needs of the public and are directly related to residents’ health. The balanced development of medical service facilities is of great significance. Public medical service facilities can be divided into different levels according to their medical equipment, service catchment, and medical quality, which is very important but has been ignored for a long time in accessibility evaluations. In this research, based on the hospital and population datasets of Shenzhen, we propose a hierarchical two-step floating catchment area (H2SFCA) method to evaluate the spatial accessibility of public medical resources considering the factors at different levels of medical resources. In the proposed method, the spatial accessibility of each level of public medical service facilities are evaluated using different distance attenuation functions according to the medical service’s scope. In addition, a measurement is proposed to evaluate the equity of medical service facilities based on accessibility and population density distributions. To synthesize the general spatial accessibility and the distribution balance of public medical service facilities, we standardize the spatial accessibility of public medical service facilities at each level and then calculate the weighted sums of the accessibility of each level. The general spatial equity of public medical service facilities is also evaluated. The results show that the accessibility and distribution balance of medical resources performs dissimilarly at the three levels and can be discriminated within different regions of the city. The accessibility of citywide medical facilities in Shenzhen decreases from the city center to the suburban area in a radial pattern and the accessibility and distribution balance in the suburban areas needs improvement.

Keywords: medical service facilities; spatial accessibility; hierarchical two-step floating catchment area method; distance attenuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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