A GIS-based method to assess the shortage areas of community health service — Case study in Wuhan, China

Abstract

One of the major issues needed to be addressed in health sector in China is that low accessibility caused by inequitable resource allocation rather than resource deficiency. Health care facility planners and policy makers need accurate and reliable measures of accessibility as a planning support or the first step of essential policy intervention. In this paper, the enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method was applied for the community health system of Wuhan. The sensitive analysis was carried out on different distance decay weights. As the finding of the research, the shortage areas of community health service in Wuhan were identified and suggestions were made on how to alleviate the community health care deficiency.