Evaluation of Nursing Facility Locations Using the Specialization Coefficient of the Population Aging Rate

Abstract

Recently, in Japan, the increase of aging population is especially rapid, the lack of nursing facilities has become a serious social issue, and the political measures against it are continuously enacted. Though the number of nursing facilities and its capacity are increasing, the utilization rate of such facilities remains at the same level, and the lack of facilities has not improved. Based on the background mentioned above, using geographic information systems (GIS) and public open data, the present study aims to quantitatively evaluate the current situation of nursing facility locations in urban areas within Japan. In the present study, the model of the p-median problem used to obtain the optimal location of facilities was modified, and a method to evaluate the current situation concerning the shortage or overage of nursing facilities by area was proposed. As evaluations are conducted using quantitative data, the evaluation results are also quantitative, making it an effective indicator for evaluating the locations of nursing facilities. Additionally, the specialization coefficient of the population aging rate and the distance between nursing facilities and areas were calculated based on public open data. Therefore, the evaluation method has a high temporal reproducibility as well as spatial reproducibility.