This study was conducted to reveal the travel time from delivery medical institutions nationwide to general and regional perinatal medical centers, or regional differences in access to pregnant women transfer, making use of the results of the study on the situation of the delivery medical institutions as well as a geographical information system.
It was found that the average travel time from the delivery medical institutions to the general and regional perinatal medical centers was 12.8 minutes, while the numbers of the childbirth cases that took 30 minutes or longer and 60 minutes or longer were 96,549 (9.5%) and 16,881 (1.7%). When it comes to the travel time to only the general perinatal medical centers, the cases that took 30 minutes or longer and 60 minutes or longer were 340,741 (33.4%) and 110,725 (10.9%) respectively.
It was thus confirmed that regional differences in the travel time from the delivery medical institutions nationwide to the perinatal medical centers. Given this situation, our policy recommendations are the following: a benchmark is to be set for the travel time for pregnant women transfer; for those medical districts and medical institutions that cannot meets such a benchmark, measures to improve access are to be included in the policy on the improvement of the perinatal medical care plans.
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