Planning health care capacities with a gravity equation

Arbeitspapier

The planning of health care capacities is in practice constrained by sectoral and regional boundaries and it remains difficult to ensure an adequate and even access to health care. Moreover, standard planning approaches lack the choice-theoretic grounding necessary for making reliable statements about the demand for health care. This paper presents a model based on the idea of gravity in supply and demand linkages and designed to overcome such shortcomings. Empirical estimation equations are derived for the size of catchment areas, the spatial access to health care and the demand for specialist treatment. The floating catchment area (FCA) method commonly used to measure access to care is shown to be a special, yet often misleading case. This is demonstrated by the example of Germany, where rural areas are shown to suffer from access deficits.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-3-96973-027-0
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Ruhr Economic Papers ; No. 888

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; State and Local Budget and Expenditures ; Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health ; Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
• Subject: Health care capacity planning ; choice-theoretic foundation ; gravity equation ; spatial multiple equation model

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Wende, Danny ; Kopetsch, Thomas ; Richter, Wolfram F.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung
• (where): Essen
• (when): 2020

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.4419/969730270
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/228641
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET