REGIONAL FACTORS RELATED WITH THE NUMBER OF AMBULANCE USERS

Abstract

Introduction: Ambulance use was increasing along with growth population of aged in Japan. The purpose of study paper is to clarify the relationship between the state of healthcare service use as well as regional characteristics and ambulance use on regions. The regions that were focused on in this study were 16 wards in Nagoya city, and those data for the past 10 years was analyzed. Methods: Analyzed variables in this study were those in previous studies reported had statistical significant with the number of ambulance use, as well as dummy variables represented year. These variables involved population and the number of household, the proportion of population aged 65 or over, the population of foreigners, proportion of livelihood protection recipients, regional health promotion measures, the proportion of health-checkups user, the number of retained motor vehicles. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis were used. Results: This study included 160 data on 16wards in Nagoya city from 2004 to 2013. Results of multiple regression analysis showed that 6 variables were statistically significant: the number of households, population of foreigners, proportion of livelihood protection recipients, Colon cancer examinee rate, the number of participants in regional health promotion measures, the number of beds per 100,000 populations. Conclusion: This study founded that the variables related with the number of ambulance user were the number of households, population of foreigners, proportion of livelihood protection recipients, Colon cancer examinee rate, the number of participants in regional health promotion measures, number of beds per 100,000 populations.