Outpatient accessibility to central dispensaries in the Kandy district
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Date
2014
Authors
Samarasinghe, W. M. E. D.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Peradeniya
Abstract
It is important to plan for a better Health Care system in developing countries such as Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, Health Care is mainly supplied by the public sector. More than 95% of inpatient services and about 50% of outpatient services are provided by the public sector. Apart from Central Dispensaries, all other Health Care institutions are providing both inpatient and outpatient services. Considering the annual OPD attendance in the Health Care institutions, there is a tendency of outpatient overcrowding in the Secondary and Tertiary Health Care institutions while causing underutilization of Primary Health Care institutions .This unbalanced accessibility has become a national issue. The main objective ofthe study is to analyze the accessibility to CDs in Kandy district. It was used to identify whether there is any effect of geographical distribution of public Health Care institutions to the problem of getting underutilization of Primary Health Care institutions in the Kandy district. To describe the accessibility, the Spatial and Network Analyst tools available in the Arc map software was used. Also the geographic areas where people would most benefit from increased access to Primary Health Care services were identified. Considering the percentage of CD accessibility, it is less than 29% for every CD in the district. It means that more than 29% of the outpatients are not utilizing CDs for OPD services. Suduhumpola, Gohagoda, Megoda Kalugamuwa, Mahakanda and Mapakanda CDs are in the 10 minutes accessible areaof Secondary & Tertiary-Health Care institutions. OPD attendances of those CDs are very low. But Gohagoda CD has good patient accessibility relative to other 4 CDs. It is better to do further analysis on Gohagoda CD to find whether there are any social factors which effect to this good patient accessibility
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Keywords
Central dispensaries , Health care