Hospital Access in Upstate New York

David JohnstonEPI 621April 27, 2010

Introduction

• Access to healthcare is an important aspect of public health– Emergency situations• Traumas involving car accidents or major disasters

where rapid care is vital to survival

– Non-emergency situations• People who live farther away from healthcare facilities

may be less likely to go for care when they should

• Determining areas that need better coverage

Project Goal

• Create a map showing:– Hospital locations across New York– Drive times to the nearest hospital across New

York• Determine the amount of people within

designated drive times of hospitals

Methods

Data Collection

• Hospitals– List of hospitals and addresses from internet– Checked against hospital list on DOH website– Converted addresses to latitude/longitude using

online batch converter– Added to the hospital list, saved as CSV and

imported into ArcMap

http://www.stevemorse.org/jcal/latlonbatch.html?direction=forward

Data Collection

• Roads– ALIS (Accident Location Information System)– Street Centerline Data

• Population data– 2000 Census – Block group level

Calculating Drive Times

• Network Analyst– ArcGIS Extension– Can be used to calculate routes, service areas,

closest facilities etc…

Step 1: Create new Network Dataset

Step 2: Create “New Service Area”

Step 3: Load hospital locations

Step 4: Set options for service areas

Step 5: “Solve” to draw the service area polygons

Results

Population Distribution by Drive Times

Driving Time (Minutes) Population Percent0-15 4,640,912 66.03%

15-30 1,823,966 25.95%30-45 436,891 6.22%

>45 127,223 1.81%

Conclusions

• Limitations– Border-effect– Only accounts for hospitals, no other service

facility• Further research– Cluster/spatial analysis of areas with low access– Determine coverage for specialty areas such as

cardiac facilities, pediatrics etc…

Questions?