Spatial Allocation of Urban Medical Facilities for the Elderly in China: With Hefei City as Example

The severe situation of a constantly growing aging population has brought along great challenges to the development of China’s medical and health undertakings. From the perspective of fairness, this paper discusses the rationality of the spatial allocation of medical facilities in the urban area of Hefei, considering the elderly’s demand through accessibility analysis. In term of medical facilities distribution, the 10-minute pedestrian accessible area of all medical facilities for the elderly is far from evenly covering the city’s urban area. The areas of high coverage rate concentrate within the Second Ring Road and aggregate in the sub-centers of the city as well. While in the fringe areas far away from the city center in the direction of the sub-city centers, which are undergoing the anti-aggregation of the elderly, the coverage rate of medical facilities is quite low. In term of medical facilities capacity(i.e., number of beds), there exits also an imbalance, with some facilities facing a serious shortage of beds, while some others seeing a remarkable surplus of beds supply. Under the premise of not adding any new medical facilities, a rational coordination of related service among different areas of the city based on the actual distribution of the elderly would be an effective measure to achieve a balance between supply and demand.