Evaluation of Accessibility to Health Centers in the Urban Area of the City of Villavicencio, Colombia
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The objective of this research is to evaluate the accessibility to health centers located in the urban area of the city of Villavicencio, taking as reference the indicators of accessibility to health services established by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). To do this, the necessary basic information is collected, which consists of the population census, the geolocation of the medical care points along with the number of beds - stretchers and doctors available in each of them, and the travel speeds of the health care network. traffic, the information is subsequently analyzed from a geostatistical point of view, to finally apply the improved floating catchment area methodology in two steps (E2SFCA). Regarding the information on health centers, we work with the classification of these activity nodes divided into two groups, on the one hand, public health centers that deal with those categorized within the State Social Enterprise (ESE), and, on the other hand, private health centers which provide a particular service; regarding the latter, it was identified during the development of the research, that the department of Meta presents a high level of affectations generated by affectivity and anxiety disorders, which is why a large part of the private health centers correspond to specialized centers focused on mental health care and rehabilitation services, which was identified as a particular panorama, which is why these health centers were excluded from the accessibility analysis, in order not to obtain inaccurate results. With the above, accessibility indicators were identified for all health centers located in the urban area of the city of Villavicencio, excluding those focused on mental health care and rehabilitation services, finding that the results of the indicators obtained show that there is acceptable behavior in terms of accessibility to beds - available stretchers, however, in relation to doctors, it is evident that there is currently no adequate coverage as established in the aforementioned document. By carrying out a comparative exercise of the results with other intermediate cities in Colombia such as Armenia, the Central Western Metropolitan Area (Pereira) and the Manizales – Villamaría Conurbation Area, it is possible to conclude that this behavior is maintained in all cases, which is why the recommendation is to strengthen the medical staff in intermediate cities of Colombia.
Authors: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, s Manizales, Facultad de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Grupo de Investigación en Movilidad Sostenible, Manizales, Colombia, e-mail: [email protected], Andrea Estefania NEIRA, Diego Alexander ESCOBAR, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Manizales, Facultad de Ingeniería y Arquitectura, Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Grupo de Investigación en Movilidad Sostenible, Manizales, Colombia, e-mail: [email protected], Carlos Alberto MONCADA, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, Facultad de Ingeniería, Departamento de Ingeniería Civil y Agrícola, Programa de Investigación en Tránsito y Transporte – PIT., Bogotá, Colombia, e-mail: [email protected]
Institution: Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Language: English
Subfield: General Health Professions
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $204
OpenAlex ID: W4407085014