Spatial Inefficiency of Hospital Locations in Southeastern United States

Abstract

This paper quantifies the spatial inefficiencies resulting from the current location of hospitals in four Southeastern states of USA (United States). Employing the concept of Greenfield Development used in regional planning, the current set of hospital locations in each of these states is compared to the results of optimal locations using two different definitions of optimality criteria: minimizing average distance and maximizing population coverage, i.e. the percentage of users located within an acceptable threshold of travel time. Thereafter, this same comparison is repeated but with the aim of analyzing the adverse impact of hospital closures in each state. We find that for average travel times and coverage, the current set of hospital locations in all four states exhibit significant spatial inefficiency in that far fewer, but optimally located, hospitals would be capable of providing equivalent or better coverage. We also find that in the event of closures, optimal locations would result in measurably less average travel times compared to current hospital locations and coverage would deteriorate only slightly. These observations collectively demonstrate the significant improvement in geographical access and resilience to closures that is possible with optimal location of hospitals in these four states. Policy implications of our findings are also discussed.