Examining Accessibility to Medical Resources for Urban Older Adults with Common Diseases Using Multisource Data: A Case Study of Beijing

With population aging becoming increasingly prominent, it has been recognized as a critical issue for urban planners whether older adults can access fair, high-quality medical services. Yet, few studies have investigated urban medical accessibility at a departmental level for older adults. Taking Beijing as a case study, this study puts forth a novel framework augmented by multisource data to analyze subdistrict-scale accessibility to urban medical departments, with a particular emphasis on older adults' common diseases. Online registration data were collected to indicate the supply capacity of medical services, with the influence of department reputation taken into account when determining the facilities' service range. A hierarchical two-step floating catchment area method was employed to examine accessibility for older adults to the cardiovascular, orthopedic, endocrinology, respiratory, and neurology departments. Subsequently, Gini indices were calculated to evaluate medical accessibility equity across urban spaces. Additionally, multiple linear regression was used to explore the correlations between medical accessibility and potential influencing factors. Results showed that medical accessibility is typically higher in downtown areas and decreases from the urban center to the peripheral areas in Beijing. Cardiovascular, respiratory, and orthopedic patients face relatively greater difficulty in accessing appropriate medical resources. Furthermore, significant inequity in medical accessibility was observed among the subdistricts at different locations, with accessibility inequity in the ecological conservation area being particularly concerning. Additionally, seven factors were found to significantly affect accessibility, including distance to the urban center, density of arterial and collector roads, proportion of residential land use, proportion of public service land use, proportion of transportation land use, and proportion of vehicle ownership. The proposed framework could identify subdistricts with low accessibility for older adult patients to access different medical departments. Therefore, it could potentially support the policy-making process by offering guidelines to adjust the construction plan of the medical system in metropolises and optimize the direction for resource input.