The disparity in geographical accessibility to healthcare resources in Iran: the comparison of two cross-section

Abstract

Purpose

Accessing adequate healthcare to all people is one of the main goals of the health sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate healthcare services access development of the provinces in Iran during 2007 and 2013.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study population included all the provinces in Iran. The data for 13 variables, including physical and human health resources, was collected from the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and the Statistics Center of Iran. Taxonomy technique was used to determine the degree of healthcare services access development in the provinces.

Findings

The findings show that Semnan was the province with the most developed healthcare services access with development score of 0.342 while Sistan Balocehstan province was the least developed with development score of one in 2007. In the year 2013, Chahar-Mahal Bakhtiari and Sistan Baluchestan were the least and most developed provinces with scores of 0.551 and 0.989, respectively. The mean and standard deviation of the development scores in access to healthcare services in 2007 and 2013 were 0.7463±0.1268 and 0.7766±0.1058, respectively.

Originality/value

Most previous studies that examined disparities in access to healthcare resources in Iran only considered one resource. This study applied a taxonomy technique to investigate the disparity and changes in access using 13 main healthcare resources. This approach helped the authors to investigate whether the decisions of the policy makers were intended to eliminate the disparities.

Citation

Emamgholipour Sefiddashti, S., Kazemi Karyani, A. and Ghazanfari, S. (2016), "The disparity in geographical accessibility to healthcare resources in Iran: the comparison of two cross-section", International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 86-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHRH-08-2015-0025