Unit 7 Planning healthcare services

This is the seventh unit in the module ‘GIS for Health Care Management’. Although there are some health care services which are genuinely mobile, most elements of the health care system are geographically fixed. The infrastructural investment in health centres and hospitals is high and decisions taken about the location of these facilities will affect the quality and accessibility of care for the populations served for many years. This unit is concerned with these issues of facility location in the health care planning context. The unit is organized into six objects as follows:

1. Levels of sophistication in facility location modelling
2. Catchment models
3. Site availability and suitability
4. Location-allocation modelling
5. Assignment

 
‘Levels of sophistication in facility location modelling’ provides an overview of approaches to the location of facilities using GIS. Many aspects of facility location analysis for health facilities are shared with similar analyses for other facilities, ranging from industrial premises to retail outlets. It is possible to model the relationship between the population served and the location of facilities at many levels involving increasing sophistication in terms of population location and characteristics, description of the facility attributes and characterisation of the flows between demand and supply locations.

‘Catchment models’ reviews methods for the demarcation of catchment areas for health care facilities. Although some types of health care service will have rigidly defined catchment areas it is more usual for the effective catchment populations to vary according to the local pattern of demand and supply for services. Patients may be willing to travel much further to facilities with good transportation links and where the quality or cost of the health care on offer are favourable. The extent to which these effective catchment areas can be modelled is an important element of health care planning. The practical exercise for this object involves using both ‘straight-line’ distances and a cost surface (a raster grid which describes the difficulty of travelling around) to calculate catchment areas. This unit therefore describes how to calculate a catchment area from a cost surface. Later on in this course in Unit 7, we explain how to create a cost surface as the input to this analysis. Units 6 and 7 are therefore closely linked.

‘Site availability and suitability’ examines the role of GIS in finding appropriate sites for the location of services. Again there are many similarities between site selection for health care facilities and those used for other types of service centres.

‘Location-allocation modelling’ considers the use of data to identify optimal locations for new services. For example, the siting of a new renal dialysis unit may be decided in part by the home locations of current patients.

The final object is the assignment. The assignment is GIS-based and involves practical implementation of some of the accessibility measures addressed in this unit.

Expect to spend about 1.5 weeks working through these materials. These objects can be carried out in any order but the Assignment question should be left as the final activity. To successfully answer the assignment question, you will need to have undertaken the preceding objects and utilised the relevant learning resources.

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