Abstract
Background and objective:Equality in distribution of health care facilities is the main cause for access and enjoyment to the health. The aim of this study was to examine the regional disparities in health care facilities across the Markazi province.Methods:This was a cross-sectional study. Study sample included the cities of Markazi province, ranked based on 15 health indices. Data was collected by a data collection form made by the researcher using statistical yearbook. The indices were weighted using Shannon entropy. Finally, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was used to rank the towns of the province in terms of access to health care facilities.Results:There is a large gap between cities of Markazi province in terms of access to health care facilities. Shannon entropy introduced the number of urban health centers per 1000 people as the most important indicator and the number of rural active health house per 1000 people as the less important indicator. According to TOPSIS, the towns of Ashtian and Shazand ranked the first and last (10th) respectively in access to health services.Conclusion:There are significant inequalities in distribution of health care facilities in Markazi province. We propose that policy makers determine resource allocation priorities according to the degree of development for a balanced and equal distribution of health care facilities.
Highlights
A balanced distribution of services and facilities is a step towards elimination of regional imbalances, because bigger regional differences in various respects move the population and capital to the poles (Shaykh Baygloo, 2012)
The results show that the highest and lowest degrees of development based on TOPSIS technique in Markazi province, belonged to Ashtian (0.802) and Shazand (0.077) respectively
In present study due to limitations in data availability, it was only analyzed access to health care facilities in Markazi province, we study the development of health services in the province to determine measure of differences in the level of development between them and providing guidance to officials and policy makers for allocating resources in the most deprived and undeveloped areas and pay more attention to them
Summary
A balanced distribution of services and facilities is a step towards elimination of regional imbalances, because bigger regional differences in various respects move the population and capital to the poles (Shaykh Baygloo, 2012). The studies have been mostly conducted on the use of economic and social indices and infrastructure development indices to classify different geographical areas, in terms of the enjoyment of the indicators (Poor Fathi & Asheri, 2010). Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per capita were the main indicators to assess development level. These indicators do not consider fairness in the distribution of health services and other social services (Mahmoudi, 2011). Equality in distribution of health care facilities is the main cause for access and enjoyment to the health. The aim of this study was to examine the regional disparities in health care facilities across the Markazi province
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