1.4 The purposes of health care planing

This learning object reviews the different purposes for which health care planning may be undertaken, particularly from the perspective of GIS use. Students are encouraged to consider the ways in which the underlying motivation will affect the basic assumptions which are brought to the planning process and the ways in which these may affect the decisions made.

 

The planning of health care in the context of increasingly specialised and costly medical services is frequently an emotive issue. Populations are generally concerned to have the maximum possible access to the best possible medical facilities and there is a strong geographical component to this aspiration. Nevertheless it is not possible to always be planning for growth: in some contexts, changing demographic characteristics and patterns of medical care mean that service provision is demonstrably in the wrong places or of the wrong types when judged by contemporary best practice or needs modelling. Closing clinics or hospitals is nevertheless almost always unpopular and stirs up well-meaning public opposition, frequently invoking ideological and political arguments. Similarly, the geographical organization of health care providers may mean that services available to the population of one area may not be available in a neighbouring area – a scenario which in the UK has frequently been termed the ‘postcode lottery’ (the implication being that entitlement to services is determined by a patient’s residential postcode rather than genuine need).

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