Spatial Distribution Characteristics of Healthcare Facilities in Nanjing: Network Point Pattern Analysis and Correlation Analysis.

Jianhua Ni,Jiechen Wang,Tianlu Qian,Changbai Xi,Yikang Rui

doi:10.3390/ijerph13080833

Abstract

The spatial distribution of urban service facilities is largely constrained by the road network. In this study, network point pattern analysis and correlation analysis were used to analyze the relationship between road network and healthcare facility distribution. The weighted network kernel density estimation method proposed in this study identifies significant differences between the outside and inside areas of the Ming city wall. The results of network K-function analysis show that private hospitals are more evenly distributed than public hospitals, and pharmacy stores tend to cluster around hospitals along the road network. After computing the correlation analysis between different categorized hospitals and street centrality, we find that the distribution of these hospitals correlates highly with the street centralities, and that the correlations are higher with private and small hospitals than with public and large hospitals. The comprehensive analysis results could help examine the reasonability of existing urban healthcare facility distribution and optimize the location of new healthcare facilities.

Highlights

The Chinese economy has been growing at a spectacular rate and people’s living standards have improved significantly since the reform and opening up
Network kernel density estimation is one of the most important network analysis methods for Network kernel density estimation is one of most important networkaccording analysis methods for density measure, which estimates the density of the point events on a network to a kernel density measure, Instead which estimates theEuclidean density ofdistance point events on in a network according to auses kernel density function
In the network KDE (NetKDE) analysis, few studies consider the influence of non-spatial factors of service facilities on the analysis

Summary

Introduction

The Chinese economy has been growing at a spectacular rate and people’s living standards have improved significantly since the reform and opening up. Chinese healthcare resources have developed significantly to cater for rising demand. Imbalanced distribution of health resources has led to severe inequality between cities and rural areas, which largely influences social stability and harmony in China. According to the Chinese government, about 80 percent of health resources (e.g., hospitals, bed numbers, and practitioners) are allocated in Chinese cities [2]. The size of large hospitals has been expanding excessively and the majority of health resources are concentrated in large city hospitals [3]. For the rapid expansion of large Chinese cities, there is an urgent need to study spatial organization and distribution of patterns of healthcare facilities to optimize their location selection and spatial allocation [4]

Methods

Results

Conclusion