A New Metric for Measuring Locational Health Access for Cancer Treatment

Ensuring access to cancer treatment facilities is essential for delivering timely care, yet various barriers such as geographic distance, socioeconomic factors, and social disparities can impede access in rural and urban regions. This study measured locational health access for colorectal cancer in the context of hospitals and population distribution in Louisiana. It used data of census tracts, hospital beds and providers, from the National Cancer Institute. By mapping the distribution of these healthcare facilities, the study revealed the potential of identifying significant challenges in accessing specialized cancer care. There is no existing locational health access metric in this domain. The contribution of this paper is that it meticulously calculated the actual road distance of each census tract centroid and each cancer-treating hospital, and offers a new locational health access metric. This metric considers the number of beds and number of oncologists, as a proxy for measurement of cancer treatment facilities. The significance of this work is that it can be applied in a larger scope (such as the country), with more variables, and for other diseases treated by hospitals. It has public policy implications; hospitals can be located through such data-driven analysis.