Understanding the dimension of an hospital catchment area is a crucial challenge in health geography because it synthetically refers to the quality of cares provided by that hospital. In order to deeper understand how hospitals manage and share patients in an health system, it could be useful interpret the relations among hospital catchment areas in a more functional and hierarchical view. The present study, after a synthetic review of literature about the theoretical concepts of catchment area and functional hierarchy, analyzes the dimensions of the market areas of the hospitals of the Abruzzo Regional Health System. Then, applying a functional perspective, it observe the hierarchical relations between hospitals and also discusses the policy implications.
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