Access by elderly patients with hip fractures to public hospitals in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

摘要

Accessibility is a fundamental aspect in the evaluation of health services. Many factors affect access, such as patient's type of health insurance, income, education, and personal preferences and perceptions.1 Geographic accessibility (the ease with which services can be obtained as a function of distance) is certainly a prominent factor.2 Despite progress in both developed and developing countries, major inequalities in health-care accessibility still exist between regions, and between social strata in a given region.3 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are an important tool for analysing these problems.4