Analysis of Spatial Accessibility and Capacity of Multi-Level Healthcare Facilities in Greater Irbid Municipality, Jordan

Abstract

Measuring the spatial accessibility and capacity of healthcare facilities is an important task to improve the quality of health services and reduce the pressure on them. This research assesses the current spatial accessibility and capacity of two-level of healthcare facilities (comprehensive healthcare centers and hospitals) in the Greater Irbid Municipality using the enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method. To do this, Network analysis techniques including original-destination matrix (OD), service area, and location-allocation were employed for determining the travel time from residents' points towards every healthcare facility, the service coverage and capacity within travel time zones, and the number of served areas by every healthcare facility. Then, optimum locations for new healthcare facilities that improve the accessibility and capacity rates were determined. The results show that while all areas in the study area are located within a 30-minute drive from the hospital's locations, 18 out of 23 areas are within 15 minutes drive towards the comprehensive health centers. This means that 28.80% of the population needs more than 15 minutes of driving time to access the second level of healthcare services. In addition, the annual average of the actual patient-doctor ratio ranges from 1338 to 2900 patients per doctor in the hospitals, and 2676 to 8524 patients per doctor in the comprehensive healthcare centers, and thus, the health services are inadequate in the study area. Furthermore, the suggested new healthcare facilities in terms of the numbers and optimum location would improve the spatial accessibility and the capacity ratio.