Citation

Deborah OML, Chiu MYL, Cao K. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018; 15(9): e15091988.

Affiliation

Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. geock@nus.edu.sg.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph15091988

PMID

30213094

Abstract

Accessible primary healthcare is important to national healthcare in general and for older persons in particular, in societies where the population is ageing rapidly, as in Singapore. However, although much policy and research efforts have been put into this area, we hardly find any spatial perspective to assess the accessibility of these primary healthcare services. This paper analyzes the geographical accessibility of one major healthcare service in Singapore, namely, General Practitioners (GPs) services under the Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) for older persons. A Python script was developed to filter the website data of the Housing Development Board (HDB) of Singapore. The data derived was comprehensively analyzed by an Enhanced 2-Step Floating Catchment Area (E2SFCA) method based on a Gaussian distance-decay function and the GIS technique. This enabled the identification of areas with relatively weak geographical accessibility of CHAS-GPs. The findings are discussed along with suggestions for health practitioners, service planners and policy makers. Despite its initial nature, this study has demonstrated the value of innovative approaches in data collection and processing for the elderly-related studies, and contributed to the field of healthcare services optimization and possibly to other human services.

Language: en

Keywords

CHAS; E2SFCA; GIS; Healthcare services; Singapore; geographical accessibility