Spatial analysis of rural medical facilities using huff model: A case study of lankao county, henan province

Abstract

Rural health care reformed in the new situation in China, indicating that the construction of medical facilities not only to solve difficult medical problems, but also to take into account the efficiency and fairness of the use of medical resources allocation. Facing these problems, the paper aims to assess the spatial distribution of rural medical services by using geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial accessibility indexes. Lankao County in Henan Province and 21 hospitals of township and county are selected as study samples. First adopted ArcGIS10.0 to collate data. Second, the authors established a network dataset to analysis the maximum coverage for hospital services space accessibility. At last, established Huff model and built a scientific evaluation for the current hospitals' distribution. There are several findings from the case study. First, the distribution of medical facility is unbalanced in rural areas in term of per capita, such as opportunity for assessing medical services and the convenience of utilizing medical services. Second, by using the Huff Model to calculate the potential population in service regions, the Huff Model to calculate the potential population in service regions, the results showed the low efficiency of the use of medical resources and the problems in these regions.