THE FUNCTIONING OF HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOMS IN THE ŁÓDŹ REGION IN THE LIGHT OF SPATIAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The article is devoted to analysis of the matching arrangement and the size of the individual hospital emergency rooms located in the Łódź region to diversify the region's population distribution in terms of municipal level. The data source for the above analysis was the National Action Plan for Emergency Medical System for the Łódź region of 23 June 2015 and Local Data Bank of Central Statistical Office. Analyze takes some variants. Firstly assumes the possibility of getting to the hospital emergency ward by victim's own transport or via emergency medical team. Furthermore taken different time ranges. For your own transport the injured assumed range of 15 and 30 minutes, while for emergency medical team average and maximum intervention time in line with the regional plan. To achieve the objective study used a two-step floating catchment area method in the classic (2SFCA) and enhanced (E2SFCA) form. As a result of the research, it was found that in strategic documents devoted to the organization of medical rescue system on the area of the Łódź province, special attention should be paid to the communes of Bielawy, Zduny, Kiernozia, Chąśno and Kocierzew Południowy in the Łowicz district as well as to the communes of Biała Rawska, Regnów, Sadkowice and Cielądz in the Rawa district and the communes of Przedbórz and Wieruszów. In each adopted research variant, the inhabitants of the aforementioned communes have the lowest accessibility levels to ER.

Keywords

• emergency department, two-step floating catchment area method, łódź region, spatial analysis, gis