Developing the framework for quantification of the resilience of the access to healthcare network

ABSTRACT The necessity of timely access to care highlights the importance of studying the resilience of the access to healthcare networks. Therefore, this research aims to develop a framework for quantification of the resilience of the access to care by organizing hierarchical healthcare facilities into a direct network. Both proxy and direct measures are employed to provide a holistic insight for decision-makers. Trophic coherence is introduced to represent the resilience level of the whole network. Then, the accessibility resilience is measured through a network recovery model. Finally, weighted directed networks are established to represent the accessible patient transfer under the scenarios of the general, maternal and elderly health services. The findings show the consistency between the proxy and direct measures through a correlation analysis for verification. Moreover, the results suggest that the healthcare accessibility network of the general health service exhibits better resilience performance compared with the other two.