Matthew Emmons
Modifying the Two Step Floating Catchment Area Model to Consider Population Heterogeneity in Regards To Primary Care Physician Access in the Toronto CMA © 2013
Access to family physicians remains an important topic in health care planning and research. This paper examines accessibility to primary care physicians in the Toronto Census Metro Area by using the Two Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) model. The original model is modified
to account for population heterogeneity by using a deprivation index. The modified model reduces the threshold travel times of the deprived census tracts while keeping the threshold for the non-deprived census tracts constant. Data is derived from the 2010 Canadian Medical Directory and the 2006 Census of Canada. The data for the deprivation index comes from the Collaboratory for Research on Urban Neighbourhoods, Community Health and Housing (2006). Findings from this study were that the 2SFCA was modified to account for population heterogeneity and that socioeconomic population characteristics seemed to be associated with accessibility. These findings suggest that multilevel analysis is needed to verify the results.