Geographic Methods for Health Services Research

This book is intended to demonstrate the application of analytic geography and cartographic techniques in health services research. Applications of these methods in identifying the problems encountered in the analysis and distribution of disease, various health indicators, and health care resources are depicted and interpreted. Introduction; A Focus on Rural and Regional Health Care Delivery; Point of Population Density and Research; Changes and Measures in the Crucial Dimension of Population; Point of Data Sources for Health Services Research; Access to Health Services; Point of Access and Cartography; Health Professions Distributions; Point of Community-Based Measures of Underservice; Point of Tracking Doctors into the Twenty-First Century; Regionalization of Health Care; Point of Rural Places and Regionalization; Point of Geographic Information Systems (GIS); Methods for Defining Medical Service Areas; Point of Hospital Closure and Access to Hospital Services; Contagious Diseases; Point of Adjustment of Tuberculosis Incidence Rates; Evaluating Clusters of Adverse Health Outcomes; Point of State Cancer Control Map and Data Program Analysis; Technical Notes; Glossary of Technical Terms; References; Index.