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KMID : 1138720140400040017
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Korean Public Health Research
2014 Volume.40 No. 4 p.17 ~ p.28
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A Study on the Geographical Distribution for Geriatric Hospitals and Long-term Care Facilities in Korea
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Chung Eun-Young
Bang Hyo-Jung
Moon Kyung-Jun
Lee Kwang-Soo
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Abstract
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Objective : The number of geriatric hospitals and long-term care facilities had been rapidly increased during the past ten years. However, the characteristics of regional distribution for the organizations were not analyzed yet. This study purposed to analyze the spatial characteristics of geriatric hospitals and long-term care facilities in Korea, and analyzed the relationships between their locations and socio-demographic features of regions.
Methods : The locations of organizations were identified based on the data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Services, and geocoding method was used for the analysis. The number of geriatric hospital was 1,215 and the number of long-term care organizations was 4,184. Statistical analysis was conducted based on the City, Gun, Gu administrative regions (N=299). Number of population over 65 years, number of employees, number of business, and number of vehicles per capita variables of regions were included in the analysis. Along with the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression analysis, Geographic Weighted Regression (GWR) analysis was performed. ArcMap v10.2 was used for the spatial analysis.
Results : The geriatric hospitals and long-term care facilities were more likely to locate in urban areas. In OLS analysis, number of population over 65 years and number of vehicles per person were significant in explaining the distribution of organizations. GWR showed better model performances compare to those of OLS. The coefficients of number of population over 65 years and number of vehicles per person showed different directions depending on regions in geriatric hospitals after GWR analysis.
Conclusion : These results suggests that geriatric hospitals were not regionally equally distributed in Korea according to the socio-demographic factors. Further study will be required to quantify the unequal distribution of organizations for older people, and to develop policy interventions to improve their accessibility to care services.
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KEYWORD
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Geriatric Hospitals, Long-term Care Facilities, Spatial Analysis, Geographical Distribution
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