Hospital location-allocation in Shiraz using Geographical Information System (GIS)

Abstract

Background: Hospitals are one of the most important health facilities in every society. Therefore, these facilities should be located in a rational manner. The present study aims to 1) select optimal locations for establishing new hospitals in Shiraz and 2) assess the location of the existing hospitals in Shiraz using the geographical information system (GIS). Methods: At first, the hospital location allocation criteria were identified through reviewing the literature. Then, the criteria were entered into a questionnaire, which was completed by experts based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Afterwards, spatial raster layers of all the criteria were created in the Arc GIS 10.3 software. Then, in order to select optimal locations for hospitals, weights of the criteria were calculated based on AHP in Arc GIS and the weights were exerted on the relevant spatial created layers. Combination of the layers was presented on a map. After evaluating the 33 existing hospitals’ locations based on the map, the areas located in standard hospital service areas (1500 m) were erased from the map in order to exclude the served areas. Results: The results revealed that ‘proximity to the main roads’ was the most important criterion amongst the whole applied criteria for selecting hospital location. This study also presented 15 land parcels, located in northern part of the city, as the best lands for constructing new hospitals. Besides, according the applied criteria in this study, none of the 33 existing hospitals were located in the appropriate locations. Conclusions: Considering the obtained pattern of the existing hospitals’ locations, in most of the cases, the existing location is not good and the future hospitals must be located in more appropriate locations. The results of this study can be useful for health policymakers to select the most suitable locations for constructing new hospitals in future.