A Review of Models Used for Investigating Barriers to Healthcare Access in Australia

Abstract

Understanding barriers to healthcare access is a multifaceted challenge, which is often highly diverse depending on location and the prevalent surroundings. The barriers can range from transport accessibility to socio-economic conditions, ethnicity and various patient characteristics. Australia has one of the best healthcare systems in the world; however, there are several concerns surrounding its accessibility, primarily due to the vast geographical area it encompasses. This review study is an attempt to understand the various modeling approaches used by researchers to analyze diverse barriers related to specific disease types and the various areal distributions in the country. In terms of barriers, the most affected people are those living in rural and remote parts, and the situation is even worse for indigenous people. These models have mostly focused on the use of statistical models and spatial modeling. The review reveals that most of the focus has been on cancer-related studies and understanding accessibility among the rural and urban population. Future work should focus on further categorizing the population based on indigeneity, migration status and the use of advanced computational models. This article should not be considered an exhaustive review of every aspect as each section deserves a separate review of its own. However, it highlights all the key points, covered under several facets which can be used by researchers and policymakers to understand the current limitations and the steps that need to be taken to improve health accessibility.

Using a knowledge translation framework to identify health care professionals’ perceived barriers and enablers for personalised severe asthma care

“…It is not surprising that system-related factors, including waitlist and appointment delays, poor service availability and access to biomarker testing emerged as themes. These barriers are consistent and recognised in many areas of chronic disease management [ 43 – 46 ], and we acknowledge that whilst significant, they are not easily changed.…”

Associations Between Socioeconomic Status, Patient Risk, and Short-Term Intensive Care Outcomes

“…It has been argued that the effect of low SES can be ameliorated by improving access to healthcare. However, from their data and this study, it is not possible to determine if patients with low SES have less access to ICUs and whether they are underrepresented in ICUs (41). In this study, low SES patients had higher severity of illness as measured by higher APACHE III scores when admitted to ICU.…”

Incorporating social determinants of health into individual care—a multidisciplinary perspective of health professionals who work with people who have type 2 diabetes

“…In this case healthcare access was allegedly inhibited because of ineffective appointment making processes that resulted in high FTA rates. Access to healthcare is a well-known SDoH [4] and is often accounted for in health equity initiatives [35][36][37]. The majority of effort towards improving healthcare access pivots around reducing barriers such as lack of transport, affordability and distance from healthcare with little, if any, focus on the barriers health services themselves create [37].…”