抄録
Areal subdivsion of a region is essential for the prediction of demand for hospital beds in regional health facilities planning. The objective of this paper is to develop a general concept for its delineation and to examine its validity by applying it to the data collected in Ibaraki Prefecture. The 'service area' of a hospital is defined as the extent of home addresses of home addresses of patients hospitalized in that hospital. The extent of hospital addresses of hospitalized residents is defined as the 'utilization area' of a residential location. The 'dependency' of a residential location upon a hospital can be measured by the ratio of those patients who are hospitalized in that particular hospital over the total number of the patients generated in that location. The 'area of influence' of a hospital is then defined as the geographic extent of residential locations having the 'dependency' upon that particular hospital greater than a certain predefined ratio. The study has concluded that the 'area of influence' is generally most effective for the areal delineation for regional health facilities planning, while the 'service area' concept is useful is useful for the planning of an individual hospital and the 'utilization area' concept is effectual for the evaluation of a hospital service level received at an individual location.
