A New Metric for Measuring Locational Health Access for Cancer Treatment.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Public Health
• Cancer Care Delivery

Background:

• Access to cancer treatment facilities is crucial for timely care but faces barriers like distance and socioeconomic disparities.
• Rural and urban disparities in healthcare access persist, impacting cancer patient outcomes.
• Existing metrics do not fully capture locational access to specialized cancer care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To measure locational health access for colorectal cancer in Louisiana.
• To develop and apply a novel metric for cancer treatment facility access.
• To identify challenges in accessing specialized cancer care based on hospital and population distribution.

Main Methods:

• Utilized National Cancer Institute data on census tracts, hospital beds, and providers.
• Calculated actual road distances between census tract centroids and cancer-treating hospitals.
• Developed a new locational health access metric incorporating hospital bed counts and oncologist numbers.

Main Results:

• Mapped healthcare facility distribution to reveal access challenges in specialized cancer care.
• The new metric quantifies locational access, considering facility resources.
• Identified significant geographic and resource-based barriers to colorectal cancer treatment access.

Conclusions:

• The developed metric offers a data-driven approach to assess cancer treatment access.
• Findings have implications for public policy and strategic hospital placement.
• The methodology can be expanded to national scope and other disease areas.