[Assessing health care accessibility in the Czech republic]

The article looks at the accessibility of health care in the Czech republic in relation to the relevant legislation. Health care access is a frequently debated issue, but quantifying it is a difficult task. There are no official regulations in our country for determining the capacity of health care workers by category and type of health care provision that could be used to ensure health care is accessible to the inhabitants of a given region. Nonetheless, a government regulation came into force in 2013 regulating local health care access and travel time. This regulation is the first of its kind in the Czech rep., but (perhaps because of this) it contains a number of ambiguities, and this lack of detail makes it impossible to ensure the regulation is fully implemented and adhered to.The aim of this article is to attempt to identify these ambiguities and to broadly pinpoint the main factors potentially affecting health care access. To achieve this, an analysis is performed on the data on health care providers and methods using advanced GIS (geographic information systems) are utilized. Given the wide range of health care services on offer, the examples relate to primary health care, specifically practical medicine for children and adolescents.