Geographical disparities in access to hospital care in Ontario, Canada: a spatial coverage modelling approach

Objectives Previous studies on geographical disparities in healthcare access have been limited by not accounting for the healthcare provider's capacity, a key determinant of supply and demand relationships. Design This study proposed a spatial coverage modelling approach to evaluate disparities in hospital care access using Canadian Institute for Health Information data in 2007. Setting This study focusses on accessibility of inpatient and emergency cares at both levels of individual hospital and the administrative regions of Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) levels. Measures We integrated a set of traffic and geographical data to precisely estimate travel time as a measure of the level of accessibility to the nearest hospital by three scenarios: walking, driving and a combination of the both. We estimated population coverage rates, using hospital capacities and population in the catchments, as a measure of the level of the healthcare availability. Hospital capacities were calculated based on numbers of medical staff and beds, occupation rates and annual working hours of healthcare providers. Results We observed significant disparities in hospital capacity, travel time and population coverage rate across the LHINs. This study included 25 teaching and 148 community hospitals. The teaching hospitals had stronger capacities with 489 209 inpatient and 130 773 emergency patients served in the year, while the population served in community hospitals were 2.64 times higher. Compared with north Ontario, more locations in the south could reach to hospitals within 30 min irrespective of the travel mode. Additionally, Northern Ontario has higher population coverage rates, for example, with 42.6 similar to 46.9% for inpatient and 15.7 similar to 44% for emergency cares, compared with 2.4 similar to 34.7% and 0.35 similar to 14.6% in Southern Ontario, within a 30 min catchment by driving. Conclusion Creating a comprehensive, flexible and integrated healthcare system should be considered as an effective approach to improve equity in access to care.