抄録
The objective of this paper is to clarify the hospital choice behaviour of inpatients through identification of hierarchical structure of hospital regions. Identification method employed is the cluster analysis using the Kull-back's minimum discriminant information as a criterion of proximity. As a data set for application, the 1973 patient survey undertaken by Hiroshima Prefecture is used. Many variables have influence on a hospital choice behaviour of inpatients. Patients' age and types of disease are among such important variables. An inpatint home-hospital flow matrix is prepared for each of the 3 age groups: children (-14), adults (15-64), and old persons (65-). Hospital regions of the old group are the smallest while those of children are the largest. Types of disease are classified to the 3 groups by means of analysing the average distance between home and hospital. Conclusions obtained from these results are: 1.The scale of hospital regions is different according to patients' age and types of disease. 2.In the south-eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture, there exists an identifiable hierarchical regional structure (e. g. two geriatric regions compose one adults region, etc.) 3. In western part, however, hospital regions are all overlapped and no hierarchical structure is identified, mainly because of dominance of Hiroshima City.
