Assessing the spatial efficiency in the location of primary health care facilities: A local application in Argentina

Abstract

If scarce resources are not used efficiently, welfare could be increased without any cost. Efficiency metrics have a long tradition in economics. However, measures of spatial efficiency (SE) are far less common in the literature. In health care, SE is crucial to guarantee population’s access to health care providers. We develop a metric of SE of Primary Health Care Centres (PHCCs) location based on the comparison of the minimum distances users must travel to reach a PHCC, considering their current location, against the distances they should travel if all PHCCs were optimally located. We apply this metric to assess the spatial efficiency of the PHCCs of Bahía Blanca City (Argentina). To determine the optimal location of the centres we used a capacitated P-Median model. The annual demand for medical consultations of each demand node was estimated by adjusting the number of inhabitants of that node by a socioeconomic index.