Meeting the needs of healthcare: Is there equal access to polyclinics?

Abstract

In many countries in the world, primary care serves as the focal point for the medical needs of patients. As Singapore transits into an ageing society, this will play a critical role in the prevention and long-term management of residents’ health conditions. This paper seeks to find out if public sector primary care providers – government polyclinics – are equitably distributed across Singapore to serve the growing healthcare needs of the population. To measure accessibility to such institutions, it makes use of the basic gravity-based model incorporating both demand and supply perspectives. Apart from the general accessibility score, two other sets of values were calculated - one assumes constant demand and supply at each polyclinic, and one adjusting for the elderly’s higher utilisation rate. Results show that the Gini-coefficients are between 0.212 and 0.249, indicating a notable degree of polyclinic access disparity across Singapore. However, healthcare planners have reduced the disparity in access through the distribution of polyclinic doctors and they have taken into consideration the elderly’s higher demand in the process. Lastly, most of the areas with a high concentration of elderly and low polyclinic accessibility are in the Central Area of Singapore.