Accessing doctors at times of need-measuring the distance tolerance of rural residents for health-related travel

Abstract

Background: Poor access to doctors at times of need remains a significant impediment to achieving good health for many rural residents. The two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method has emerged as a key tool for measuring healthcare access in rural areas. However, the choice of catchment size, a key component of the 2SFCA method, is problematic because little is known about the distance tolerance of rural residents for health-related travel. Our study sought new evidence to test the hypothesis that residents of sparsely settled rural areas are prepared to travel further than residents of closely settled rural areas when accessing primary health care at times of need. Methods: A questionnaire survey of residents in five small rural communities of Victoria and New South Wales in Australia was used. The two outcome measures were current travel time to visit their usual doctor and maximum time prepared to travel to visit a doctor, both for non-emergency care. Kaplan-Meier charts were used to compare the association between increased distance and decreased travel propensity for closely-settled and sparsely-settled areas, and ordinal multivariate regression models tested significance after controlling for health-related travel moderating factors and town clustering. Results: A total of 1079 questionnaires were completed with 363 from residents in closely-settled locations and 716 from residents in sparsely-settled areas. Residents of sparsely-settled communities travel, on average, 10 min further than residents of closely-settled communities (26.3 vs 16.9 min, p∈