Unit 4 Healthcare needs assessment & demand representation
This is the fourth unit in the module ‘GIS for Health Care Management’. This unit deals with the measurement and modelling of need for health care. Most health care planning is driven by some underlying concept of health care needs, yet this very phenomenon can be extremely difficult to define and measure. Although we could fairly easily agree that a person who is currently experiencing severe pain is in greater immediate need of treatment than someone in good health and without pain, it immediately becomes difficult to quantify need when we move away from these types of extreme example: is a young adult in Europe with a sports-related injury in greater need than an elderly person living in the same town suffering with a chronic condition which limits their daily activity but generally leaves them pain-free? How do the needs of these individuals compare with those of a child in the developing world who is suffering from measles due to the lack of an adequate vaccination programme? Measurements of health needs are generally relative, context dependent and involve value judgements as well as simple measurement. In this unit we will assess various aspects of this challenging topic:
- Relative and absolute need
- Medical and social needs models
- Census, survey and administrative services
- Demand characteristics
- Deprivation indicators
- Targeting population groups
- Cultural specificity
- Assignment
The learning object ‘Relative and absolute need’ develops further the distinction between those aspects of need for health care which can be conceptualised and measured absolutely and those which are necessarily relative, demonstrating the geographical scales and contexts within which we might be able to construct meaningful measures.
‘Medical and social needs models’ explores a second important aspect of needs measurement, which is the distinction between needs as assessed by direct medical diagnosis and more generalized models of need which we might expect to find present in a population with certain characteristics. Although at the individual level it may be possible to use information from the health care system directly in the comparison of individuals’ needs, this does not usually form an appropriate basis for the planning of the health care system, which requires application of population-level models of need in order to assess the likely demands on the health and welfare system taking into account the overall composition of the population served.
‘Demand characteristics’ considers the ways in which likely patterns of demand for services can be measured and represented in GIS. As with the locations of facilities themselves, we are faced with a wide range of options regarding spatial and attribute details, depending on the richness of the data environment.
The relationship between ill health and low income or material deprivation is repeatedly found in the health care literature. The learning object dealing with ‘deprivation indicators’ looks at ways in which deprivation indicators can be used to assist in the estimation of need for health care services, taking examples from different contexts.
‘Cultural specificity’ explores further the way in which all assessment of health care needs may need to be adapted to different cultural interpretations of health and illness, both between and within national settings.
The final object is the assignment. The assignment is GIS-based and involves practical implementation of some of the measures of need 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.