# Health Care Accessibility Analysis Considering Behavioral Preferences for Hospital Choice
## 4 Discussions
### Statistical Analysis  
First, the maximum and minimum values of the accessibility of the medical facility services in each community at 12 moments before and after the improvement were counted. Second, the average accessibility of the whole study area was calculated with area as the weight, and then the amount and rate of change were calculated, as shown in Table 1.  
Finally, the proportion of area for each change level in each time period was counted, as shown in Table 2.  
The mean change reflects the absolute amount of change in the accessibility of health care facilities across the study area. Corresponding to the mean change is the mean rate of change, which reflects the relative range of change in the accessibility of medical facilities across the study area. Across the four moments, the largest mean change was 0.36 at 8:00 a.m. and the smallest was 0.09 at 2:00 a.m. Similarly, the largest mean rate of change was 3.57% at 8:00 a.m. and the smallest was 0.91% at 2:00 a.m.  
As shown in Figure 7, the change at 8:00 a.m. was divided into three levels of {[\(-\)30,1), [\(-\)1,1), [1,10]}. Considering [\(-\)30,1) and [1,10] as larger changes, it can be found that most of the larger change areas were concentrated in the area within 1.5 km of the hospital. The change is mainly due to the fact that the improved method takes into account the distance factor in addition to time. On the one hand, 1.5 km is relatively not far, and time priority and distance priority may end up taking about the same amount of time, so urban residents may be insensitive to this and thus habitually choose the distance priority. On the other hand, because 8:00 a.m. is the peak commuting time, the study area in this paper is congested with traffic and parking near hospitals is difficult. In contrast, electric bicycles and shared bicycles are currently readily available in large Chinese cities and are less affected by traffic congestion. Therefore, residents may prefer to use non-motorized vehicles to travel to the nearest hospital when the condition is not severe and the distance is not too far. This results in residents not always choosing hospital visits strictly based on travel time costs, causing communities near hospitals to prioritize visits to hospitals that are closer in distance and have slightly more travel time, ultimately resulting in a change in the accessibility of communities near hospitals compared to the time-based results. This also proves to some extent the validity of the improvement method. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Class** & **2:00 a.m.** & **8:00 a.m.** & **2:00 p.m.** & **6:00 p.m.** \\ \hline Average before improvement & 9.17 & 10.00 & 9.73 & 10.00 \\ Average after improvement & 9.08 & 9.64 & 9.39 & 9.70 \\ Rate of average change & 0.91\% & 3.57\% & 3.48\% & 3.02\% \\ Max. change & 3.76 & 28.06 & 16.38 & 15.98 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Statistics of accessibility calculated by the two methods (Wuhan, China, 2022). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Class** & \begin{tabular}{c} **Area Percentage** \\ **at 2:00 a.m. (\%)** \\ \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{c} **Area Percentage** \\ **at 8:00 a.m. (\%)** \\ \end{tabular} & \
\begin{tabular}{c} **Area Percentage** \\ **at 2:00 p.m. (\%)** \\ \end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Area Percentage** \\ **at 6:00 p.m. (\%)** \\ \end{tabular} \\ \hline \(-\)30\(-\)20 & 0.00\% & 0.23\% & 0.00\% & 0.00\% \\ \(-\)20\(-\)10 & 0.00\% & 0.31\% & 0.34\% & 0.58\% \\ \(-\)10\(-\)0 & 57.87\% & 41.20\% & 49.47\% & 52.68\% \\ 0\(-\)1 & 33.77\% & 41.46\% & 38.03\% & 28.51\% \\ 1\(-\)5 & 8.35\% & 16.56\% & 11.90\% & 17.44\% \\ 5\(-\)10 & 0.00\% & 0.24\% & 0.25\% & 0.79\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Difference of the area percentage of accessibility between the two methods (Wuhan, China, 2022). The results indicate that the improvements affect accessibility throughout the study area, but the overall effect is not significant and varies by time of day.