| OCR Text |
Show ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE (Measured by Distance to Health Care Facility) "Rural access" refers to the geographic availability of health care services to rural populations. The task force on Rural Health Policy Development has defined rural to be all Utah counties except Weber, Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah counties, an area that encompasses 96% of the state's land and 22.5% of its population. Most of the rural area of Utah meets the definition of a "frontier" area: a geographical area having a population density of six or fewer people per square mile. These parts of Utah are among the least populated areas in the nation, and hence there are special difficulties in providing access to health care. One method of assessing rural access is use of an isochrone model. An isochrone is defined as "a geographic area that is within a specified time or distance from a health care delivery site"1 An "outlier area" is a geographic region outside the isochrone's boundaries. The example included in this Review (Table 101 and the Isochrone map, Figure 60) uses the farthest distance that can be traveled in 40 minutes at the legal speed limit. * Utah Department of Health, Division of Health Care Resources, Bureau of Local and Rural Health Systems. (1992, April). Utah's Vision For Rural Health Care: Policies. Goals, and Strategies. Salt Lake City: Author, p. 3, B-l. 70 HEALTH CARE, ACCESS AND QUALITY |
