Rural residents tend not to seek medical treatment unless their illness is very serious, due to lower Cultural and Socioeconomic circumstances in comparison with their urban counterparts. In particular, rural residents lack accessibility to medical fa...
Rural residents tend not to seek medical treatment unless their illness is very serious, due to lower Cultural and Socioeconomic circumstances in comparison with their urban counterparts. In particular, rural residents lack accessibility to medical facilities due to poor transportation and distance.
This paper is an attempt to analyze the scale of rural hospitals the circumstances of the patients, and the distribution of their residential regions, with the intent of proposing a plan for building hospitals with increased accessibility to rural residents. The findings from the survey of medical facilities are as follows:
1. In rural hospitals the patients are usually those who require simple examination, surgical operation and treatment rather than more specialized and technical treatment, due to the fact that in rural hospitals there are no highly qualified specialists or up-to-date medical facilities. Thus patients who require specialized treatments tend to consult doctors in urban areas.
2. In the rural hospitals surveyed in this study, 77.6 percent of the out-patients and 71.2 percent of the in-patients lived with in radius of 20 kilometers from the hospitals.
3. The average period if hospitalization is 9.7 days.
Bed occupancy rate is 56.2%, with an admission rate of 12.2 Per 1,000 people.
4. If the ideal bed occupancy rate is assurmed to be 75 percent then there is a total of 0.4 beds per 1,000 people.