Spatial Interaction Model for Healthcare Accessibility: What Scale Has to Do with It

Abstract

This manuscript develops a theoretical spatial interaction model using the entropy approach to relax the assumption of the deterministic utility function. The spatial healthcare accessibility improves as the demand for healthcare increases or the opportunity cost of traveling to and from healthcare providers decreases. The empirical application used different spatial econometric techniques and multilevel modeling to evaluate the spatial distribution of existing hospitals in Texas and their social and economic correlates. To control for spatial autocorrelation, spatial autoregressive regression models were estimated, and geographically weighted regression models examined potential spatial non-stationarity. The multilevel modeling controlled for spatial autocorrelation and also allowed local variation and spatial non-stationarity. The empirical analysis showed that healthcare accessibility was not stationary in Texas in 2015, with areas of poor accessibility in rural and peripheral areas in Texas, when using hospitals’ location and county data. The model of spatial interaction applied to healthcare accessibility can be used to evaluate policies aiming at the provision of health services, such as closures of hospitals and capacity increases.