Teaming up census and patient data to delineate fine-scale hospital service areas and identify geographic disparities in hospital accessibility.

ABSTRACT: The number of hospital beds per capita, an important measure of equity in healthcare availability and resource allocation, was found to vary across geographic areas in many countries, including the USA. The hospital service areas (HSAs) have proven to be more meaningful spatial units for studying health-seeking behaviors and health resource allocation and service utilization. However, when evaluating the geographical balance in ratios of hospital beds to population (HBtP), no existing HSA delineation methods directly consider the underlying population distribution. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this study incorporated the State Inpatient Database with census data to develop a population-based HSA delineation method. The census-derived HSAs were produced for Florida and were v

SUBMITTER: Jia P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6598966 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature