Evaluation Method of Equalization of Basic Medical Services from the Spatial Perspective: The Case of Xinjiang, China

Abstract

Protecting residents’ health and improving equality are important goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has placed a heavy burden on the medical systems of many countries and been disastrous for the low-income population of the world, which has further increased economic, health, and lifelong inequality in society. One way to improve the population’s health is to equalize basic medical services. A scientific evaluation of the status quo or the equalization of basic medical services (EBMS) is the basic prerequisite and an important basis for realizing the equitable allocation of medical resources. Traditional evaluation methods ignore the spatial characteristics of medical services, mostly using the indicator of equal weight evaluation, which restricts the objectivity of the evaluation results. Given this, this research proposes a set of EBMS evaluation methods from a spatial perspective and takes the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China (Xinjiang) as an example for studying the status quo of EBMS. This study puts forward a set of EBMS evaluation methods from a geospatial perspective and makes full use of spatial analysis and information theory techniques to construct a two-level evaluation indicator that takes into account the spatial characteristics of EBMS. The entropy weight method and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method have been used to reveal the current status quo of EBMS in Xinjiang to objectively reflect the differences in EBMS. When using the entropy and TOPSIS methods, the evaluation is always based on the data so that the results can more objectively reveal the medical resources available to the residents. Therefore, the government can realize a reasonable allocation of medical resources.