Journal of

• Background: Improper distribution of medical care creates access inequality to the services in developing countries. This study aimed at investigating inequalities in access to medical facilities in Kermanshah's Metropolitan Area.

  Materials and Methods: The study was an applied and descriptive – analytical one. Due to the spatiotemporal nature of current research, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used. Research data was included hospital addresses and demographic data from statistical blocks of Kermanshah based on Iran’s 2011 census report.

  Results: The study results represented that spatial distribution of hospitals was concerned on a random pattern in metropolitan of Kermanshah and there was not a special mechanism in hospitals' spatial distribution. In total, Kermanshah city has 13 hospitals with 2342 hospital bed till 2014 which the most of them were related to general hospitals. In existing situation, the statistics revealed that only 48.51% of population has covered by hospitals and 51.49% of households have no standard access. The number of existing hospitals cannot response to the citizen's needs.In this study; current location of the most hospitals was not compatible with scientific criteria; standards and usage requirement.

  Conclusion: It is concluded that all residents had not equal access to hospitals; and also their distribution was not proportionate with population distribution and households. There is inequality in access to medical facilities focused on hospitals of Kermanshah's Metropolitan Area.

  Keywords: Inequalities, Management, Health, Accessibility, Hospital, Geographical Information System

Background:  Equitable and suitable access of all citizens to the urban public service is one of the primary principles of urban planning, which with the rise of the justice-centered approaches in recent decades has been double care. In the meantime, access to health services as one of the vital public service has greater sensitivity. This research has been performed with aim of identify enjoyed and non-enjoyed regions regarding health care and its distribution assessment applications in Tabriz city.
Materials and Methods: For the access analysis ARC GIS software, specially Network Analysis tool and Williamson and entropy index and has been utilized. Also, considering respective per capita, Tabriz city population needs and the existing deficiencies have been specified.
Results: The study results indicate that %76 of Tabriz city population have optimal access to healthcare facilities. In contrast, in the analysis of access to hospitals %36 of population have optimal access to theme and %64 have Undesirable access. Also, in urban zones analyses unit, based on Williamson index analysis, the index was calculated 0.67 to Tabriz city, which indicates an imbalance in the distribution of health care Facilities in the Tabriz city.
Conclusion: In general, zone 2 has the most balanced distribution of health care facilities and zone 9 is suffering from imbalanced distribution of health care facilities. It is suggested that in order to reduce the inequalities in the enjoyment of health care facilities, proper assessment about to existing facilities and future planning, in terms of Threshold, capacity and access should be conducted.