A GIS-based assessment of spatial accessibility to County hospitals: A case study of dancheng County, China

National Science Foundation of China; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Nanyang Technological University<span class="MedBlackText">The aim of this study was to investigate Chinese rural people's accessibility to healthcare. GIS techniques and the gravity-based model were combined to calculate the measure of accessibility to county hospitals in Dancheng County. The result demonstrates that when travel friction coefficient is 1.0, the highest accessibility is found in the county seat and declines outward to other settlements. The residents in the east and southeast part of the county have worse accessibility to county hospitals. To improve rural people's accessibility to health services, the paper suggests that the local government should build a county-level hospital in the east part of the county and increase road class to reduce travel time. The suggestions can be applied to other counties in rural China. Finally, bus routes and timetables should be considered in a future study of measuring rural people's access to services in the county seat.