Abstract
The Patient Access Area Model (PAAM) is a technique used to evaluate the balance of future medical demand and supply in small areas, simulating patients' access to hospitals using a geographic information system (GIS). In this study, we changed the value of several parameters of the PAAM―such as patients' travel time for each hospital, number of hospitalization days, availability of hospital beds, and rate of treatment accepters―in order to investigate how to prevent the over-demand of healthcare. When we assumed hospital bed availability to be 80%, which is the same as the current status, it was predicted that over 77,000 inpatients would not receive inpatient care in the Tokyo metropolitan area in 2030. However, this number would decrease if we lowered the rate of treatment accepters by 10% and the number of hospitalization days. Using this model, recommendations can be made regarding what action should be undertaken and by when to prevent a dramatic increase in healthcare demand. This method can help plan geographical resource allocation in medical services for healthcare policy.
