Is distance negatively impacting my communitys health care services?
Unfortunately, populations and health care services are not distributed optimally across the landscape. Long travel times denote a scarcity of health care services that can impede development objectives. To get a better idea of differences in access to health care services in Indiana, Purdue researchers Unal, Chen and Waldorf collected information about health care services in the county of residence, medical services offered in other Indiana counties, and the distances that residents must travel to reach medical services. Their calculations determine how accessible health services are in a county. They assessed access to physician care, access to hospital care, and access to hospital care services, which combined physician and hospital care access. For each assessment, scores were normalized so comparisons could be made across counties. Thus, the county that scored the lowest in each category received a score of zero. The highest scored county received a score of 1. Scores close to on
