Access to Emergency Medical Services: An Urban Planning Methodology for the Generation of Equity

Abstract

The access and possibility of rapid response to medical emergencies is an issue that, in last decades, has been studied in many areas of research such as urban planning and transportation, as well as with the issue of equity in the provision of this healthcare service. This is true, in particular for middle- and low-income countries subject to non-equitative access to services such as medical emergency attention. In this study, a medical emergency database review is carried out in order to propose a new methodology to assess the coverage of Ambulance Dispatches and Emergency Service Facilities. This is executed using primary information relating to medical emergencies that occurred in the city of Manizales between 2010 and 2015 and secondary data relating to socio-demographic and economic conditions, analyzing their correlation using a GIS (Geographic Information System) application. This research article proposes a methodology for improving the population coverage of Ambulance Dispatches and Emergency Service Facilities, trying to reduce health inequity in terms of assistance to medical emergencies. Our results show that in order to reduce social and health inequity, the city of Manizales needs to improve its provision of emergency care attention, based on urban planning tools especially in low-income neighborhoods.

Healthcare Logistics System Planning for Facility Location of Aging Society

“…ARIMA is suitable for using a single set of historical data for analysis and forecasting. In addition, the Time Series Forecasting by Tell-Jenkins Method (Box-Jenkins) applied with no fixed model in the analysis [18]. The model can be represented in the ARIMA model without seasonal influence.…”

Analysis of coverage of fire stations in Manizales (Colombia) through territorial accessibility

“…On the first stage the equipment to be studied is georeferenced, in this case the operating fire stations in Manizales (3 stations) and Villamaría (1 station) with the help of the various tools of the geographic information systems (GIS), in this ArcGis software [6,13]. Likewise, the node of the road network closest to each equipment studied must be related to which the calculations of territorial accessibility of the subsequent stage can be made.…”

“…The term accessibility, which since its first definition as the potential for interaction opportunities given by Hansen (1959) [12], has taken different perspectives [10], approaches [11], types of measures [22] and analysis [15], making it a very important methodology in urban planning and transportation which currently has multiple challenges and applications [1,9,25]. In this research, a coverage analysis will be carried out for the fire stations in Manizales and their relationship with the population, their socio-economic level and the expected response time, obtaining an analysis related to social equity and coverage of emergency equipment [13].…”

“…In Manizales, several studies related to territorial accessibility have been made being used as a tool for urban planning for the evaluation of public transport systems [7], measuring the coverage of facilities such as the ambulance centers [13], shopping centers [27], eco-natural parks [6], universities [26], among others. These studies, in most cases, have had an evaluative component of social equity in access to transport due to their importance in closing inequality gaps around the world [17].…”