Investigating Accessibility of Hospitals in Cold Regions: A Case Study of Harbin in China

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to explore healthcare resource accessibility in Harbin, a typical city in a cold region in China. Background: Recently, investments in the construction of medical resources have been increasing annually in China, and consequently, the allocation of these resources has improved. Snow and ice on surfaces in China’s cold regions have certain effects on the traffic capacity of urban roads, leading to a great difference in the accessibility of medical resources in winter and summer. Methods: The basic spatial data, including spatial road data, medical facility data, and population distribution data, are analyzed using geographic information system. Then, a spatial barrier model is used to measure healthcare accessibility based on geographic and population weighting; we explore the accessibility of hospitals under the influence of weather by defining a novel distance attenuation function. Finally, the accessibility of medical institutions in the study area is explored by analyzing data about the related separation factors. Results: It was found that the spatial distribution of medical resources was not equal, and the dominant resources were concentrated in the city center. Some regions are always in an advantageous position regardless of traffic conditions. In contrast, in areas far from the city center, the accessibility of medical resources significantly decreases in winter. Conclusions: These results will help optimize the layout of medical institutions and improve medical equality and propose strategies for the optimization of the accessibility of urban medical institutions in cold regions of China.

Factors and key problems influencing insured’s poor perceptions of convenience of basic medical insurance: a mixed methods research of a northern city in China

“…The study also found that inefficiency in basic medical insurance expense settlement within the same urban cities reduces the insured’s PCBMI, which echoes the quantitative results showing the lower PCMBI of the rural insured. Harbin is a typical city which covers an area of over 53,000 square kilometers, and the distribution of medical resources is uneven with more resources in the city center than at the edge of the city [ 44 ]. Many residents have to travel long distances to reach hospitals.…”

Nexus between health poverty and climatic variability in Pakistan: a geospatial analysis

“…A bunch of previous literature has shown that climate change has a substantial impact on child health (Thompson et al, 2012;Bennett and Friel, 2014;Davenport et al, 2017;Bhandari et al, 2020;Helldén et al, 2021), or maternal health (Giulia et al, 2020;Khan et al, 2011;Kuehn and McCormick, 2017;Rylander et al, 2013;Watt and Chamberlain, 2011). Access to hospitals and family planning centers were also associated with climate change (Peters et al, 2008;Chen et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2022).…”