Unveiling the Spatial Inequality of Accessibility to High-Quality Healthcare Resources in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Urban Agglomeration of China: A Focus on the Impacts of Intercity Patient Mobility
2025
Yandi Wang | Lin Chen | Binglin Liu | Zhuolin Tao
The equality of accessibility to high-quality healthcare resources is an important issue in the development of urban agglomerations. However, comprehensive consideration of the impacts of intercity patient mobility and multilevel transportation networks is still lacking. This study develops a novel directional two-step floating catchment area method for measuring spatial accessibility to high-quality hospitals in the Beijing&ndash:Tianjin&ndash:Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration. This method emphasizes the direction of intercity patient mobility caused by the hierarchy of high-quality healthcare resource distributions. Empirical analyses were conducted based on subdistrict-level population census data in 2020, 3-A hospital data from healthcare commissions, and door-to-door travel time data via multilevel intercity transportation networks from online maps in 2023. The analyses revealed obvious spatial inequalities in accessibility to high-quality healthcare resources in the BTH urban agglomeration, which is primarily caused by intercity inequality. Intercity patient mobility, however, can significantly mitigate the spatial inequality of healthcare accessibility within the BTH urban agglomeration. Moreover, it was determined that intracity first-mile and last-mile transfer transportation is the major barrier to intercity healthcare seeking and accessibility. This study has valuable implications for the planning and management of high-quality healthcare resources and intercity patient mobility in the BTH urban agglomeration. The developed methods are useful for measuring healthcare accessibility and inequality at the urban agglomeration scale.
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