AAG 2023 Annual Meeting

Authors: 

Xiaokang Fu, CGA, Harvard

Lingbo Liu,

Meifang Li, Dartmouth

Abstract

2SFCA and i2SFCA are widely used to evaluate the accessibility of healthcare and the potential crowdedness of a hospital. However, there are still some challenges in the application of these models in the actual application, (1) the need for further verification of the model in non-US regions (2) the model is difficult to calibrate due to the lack of ground truth data (3) the supply and demand consideration in the model is too simple. We address these challenges by using online physician appointment data. Taking one of the most developed areas in China, Shenzhen city, as the study area, we first compared the associations between the potential crowdedness estimates (based on the i2SFCA method) with actual appointments at different supply and demand configurations. Through correlation analysis, we first calibrated the model's travel distance threshold parameter, and we also detailed the model's applicability in non-US regions for the first time. By considering a more granular supply and demand configuration, we detail how different demand and supply configurations including the physician's occupational title, and the sex and age of the population affect the model's analysis results. The results show that the 2SFCA and i2SFCA can be used in non-US regions and the calibrated 2SFCA can be used to evaluate the accessibility of healthcare in Shenzhen city. This study also provides model configuration suggestions for the practical application of both I2SFCA and 2SFCA and highlights the most important factors that influence the hospital selection process in China.

https://aag.secure-platform.com/aag2023/solicitations/39/sessiongallery/...