Research on fairness of public health service in Haizhu District of Guangzhon

Objective The study was conducted to quantitatively analyze the fairness of residents' access to public health service,and thus to provide the scientific basis for the achievement of fair and effective health service.Methods Based on the census of 2002 and the data recorded by primary hospital physicians,the residents were distributed randomly at the residential quarters of individual blocks and each person was allocated his visiting hospital in specific probability.The physician-to-pa- tient ratio was then introduced to evaluate the fairness of patients' access to the health service.The spatial distribution of the fairness in the studied public area was implemented with Kriging method in ArcGIS 9.0 environment.Results The variation of spatial accessibility to primary hospitals in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou was achieved.Conclusion The fairness of residents' access to health service is related not only with the number and proportion of residents and the scale and position of hospitals,but also with the distribution of population and the uncertainty of patients' choice at the vis- iting hospital.