Earth, Environment & Sustainability: Faculty Publications
Assessing spatial accessibility to medical resources at the community level in shenzhen, China
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-16-2019
Publication Title
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
DOI
10.3390/ijerph16020242
Abstract
Spatial accessibility to medical resources is an integral component of universal health coverage. However, research evaluating the spatial accessibility of healthcare services at the community level in China remains limited. We assessed the community-level spatial access to beds, doctors, and nurses at general hospitals and identified the shortage areas in Shenzhen, one of the fastest growing cities in China. Based on hospital and population data from 2016, spatial accessibility was analyzed using several methods: shortest path analysis, Gini coefficient, and enhanced 2-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA). The study found that 99.9% of the residents in Shenzhen could get to the nearest general hospital within 30 min. Healthcare supply was much more equitable between populations than across communities in the city. E2SFCA scores showed that the communities with the best and worst hospital accessibility were found in the southwest and southeast of the city, respectively. State-owned public hospitals still dominated the medical resources supply market and there was a clear spatial accessibility disparity between private and public healthcare resources. The E2SFCA scores supplement more details about resource disparity over space than do crude provider-to-population ratios (PPR) and can help improve the efficiency of the distribution of medical resources.
Recommended Citation
Zhu, Lei, Shuang Zhong, Wei Tu, Jing Zheng, Shenjing He, Junzhe Bao, Cunrui Huang.
2019.
"Assessing spatial accessibility to medical resources at the community level in shenzhen, China."
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16 (2).
doi: 10.3390/ijerph16020242
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/geo-facpubs/231
Copyright
This work is archived and distributed under the repository's Standard Copyright and Reuse License (opens in new tab). End users may copy, store, and distribute this work without restriction. For all other uses, permission must be obtained from the copyright owners or their authorized agents.
