Formulation of management strategies for medical clinics using geographic information systems

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the importance of location information and patient volume estimation as strategic factors for clinic management in Japan's increasingly competitive medical institution environment. Official patient surveys are typically used to estimate the number of patients, but this provides only limited information. In this study, we will use urology-related diseases in the elderly as an example, estimate the number of patients based on out-of-hospital prescription dispensing data for each city, ward, town and village, and use synthetic population data to explore the relationship between family structure and diseases. In addition, to evaluate the attractiveness of clinics, we will use GIS to visualize location information and analyze it in combination with location information of competing clinics. Furthermore, we will use the Huff model to search for attractive locations for opening clinics, and for this purpose, we will conduct a questionnaire survey among urological disease patients living in the target area and set numerical values for attractiveness. This is expected to provide strategic geographic information for clinic management.