Is there regional inequality in medical accessibility? Application of driving time data to measure trauma center accessibility in South Korea

An important aspect of successfully treating the severely injured, or trauma patients, is for them to reach a hospital within an hour (what is often called the “golden hour”). In this paper, we utilize novel driving time data for more than 3,400 townships in South Korea to investigate the disparity in access to trauma centers (TC) between metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions. We found large differences in TC accessibility by regions. In metropolitan cities, 99.8% of residents were within 60 minutes of a TC. However, in nonmetropolitan provinces, 21% of residents, or 6 million, could not reach TC within this time. In four non-metropolitan provinces, almost 50% of residents could not reach them within the golden hour. Taken together, the results suggest that, if broad coverage of TC service is a primary objective, government resources should be prioritized toward improving TC accessibility in non-metropolitan regions.