Abstract
The purpose of this study is to classify 756 cities into several types by various medical indices in order to investigate the state of the existing medical resources such as facilities and manpower of the cities in Japan through the following procedures. 1. 180 variables were collected as significant indices concerning medical facilities, manpower, social situations, and economic situations for each of 756 cities. 2. This data was processed by factor analysis, through which nine dimensions were obatined. Taking into account these dimensions, 56 variables were selected as the representable indices to classify the cities. 3. Three principal components were obtained through principal component analysis and were interpretted as follows, namely, the maturity of cities, the level of medical stocks in resources, the share of medical care services between hospitals and clinics. 4. 756 cities were classified into nine types at the result of hierachy cluster analysis based on these three component scores. 5. The discriminating variables between different types of cities were extracted by stepwise discriminant analysis. In the consequence of the above prccedures, these types of cities turned out to be relevant to represent the cities under different medical circumstances.
