Assessing emergency healthcare accessibility in the Salton Sea region of Imperial County, California

The area surrounding California’s Salton Sea, which lies within Riverside and Imperial counties, has particularly negative health outcomes. Imperial County, a primarily rural region that encompasses the lake, has pediatric asthma-related emergency healthcare visits that double the state average. Thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-06, Vol.16 (6), p.e0253301-e0253301
Main Author: Juturu, Preeti
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural production
Air pollution
Asthma
Census
Censuses
Driving conditions
Emergencies
Emergency medical care
Emergency service
Environmental health
Euclidean geometry
Geography
Health care
Health care facilities
Health facilities
Health services
Hospitals
Medicine and Health Sciences
Outdoor air quality
Pediatrics
People and places
Population
Regions
Research and Analysis Methods
Roads
Rural areas
Spatial analysis
Traffic
Travel
Travel time
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Summary:The area surrounding California’s Salton Sea, which lies within Riverside and Imperial counties, has particularly negative health outcomes. Imperial County, a primarily rural region that encompasses the lake, has pediatric asthma-related emergency healthcare visits that double the state average. This paper seeks to assess the level of emergency healthcare access in the Salton Sea region of Imperial County, drawing from spatial science methods. For this study, the "Salton Sea region" is defined as all Imperial County census tracts that include the Salton Sea within its boundaries. To measure "access," this study calculated driving travel times from census tracts to hospitals within Imperial County rather than Euclidean distance to account for geography and urban infrastructures such as road networks and traffic conditions. This study also used the Rational Agent Access Model, or RAAM, to assess access. RAAM scores account for the supply and demand for hospitals in addition to travel times. Results showed that the average travel time for Salton Sea region residents to drive to Imperial County emergency healthcare facilities ranged from 50–61 minutes, compared to 14–20 minutes for other Imperial County tracts. RAAM scores, compared to other Imperial County tracts, were about 30% higher in the Salton Sea region, meaning that healthcare supply is limited in the region. State and county policy should account for spatial inaccessibility to healthcare institutions in order to address emergency healthcare access.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0253301