Evaluating and Ranking of Isfahan Provinces in Terms of Access to Health Sector Indicators

Abstract

Introduction: One of the most important dimensions of communities development is health development, in the other hand, is amount and quality of accessing of people to healthcare services. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and rank the Isfahan towns in terms of access to indices of health sector. Method: In this applied, analytical, cross-sectional Study, all Isfahan towns (n= 23) are surveyed in 2011. Data related to15 health indices were collected from the website of the Ministrry of Health and Medical Education and the Iranian Statistics Center. These indices were weighted by Shannon’s entropy. Finally, SAW (Simple Additive Weighting), TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and VIKOR (Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisn Resenje) technique were used to rank the towns of the Isfahan in terms of access to health sector indicators. Results: Variable of access to health sector indicators is not distributed normally in Isfahan province. On the other hand, there is a great difference among the Isfahan towns in terms of access to health indicators. Shannon’s entropy showed that, the proportion of active treatment centers (weight=0.182) to every 10000 people is the most important indicator. According to Copeland method, the towns of Kashan and Barkhovar were ranked as the first and last in access to health services. Conclusion: According to unbalanced distribution of access to health indicators in Isfahan towns, it suggested that: when health policy makers and officials allocate budget and resources, should Take into account the rankings of towns. Keywords: Health Status Indicators; Techniques; Isfahan

Keywords

• Health Status Indicators
• Techniques
• Isfahan