Diseño y aplicación de un modelo de localización asignación para la evaluación del acceso a unidades médicas de primer nivel de la Secretaria de Salud para municipios rurales en el Estado de México

To face the problems of access to health services in Mexico, the purpose of this work is to present a tool for making decisions regarding the problem of the population proportion with limited access to health services, being more significant in rural areas. Concerning this, the Integrator Model of Health Care of the Health in Mexico is aimed at removing geographical barriers, as well as improving organizational and cultural access to health services through the coordination of health care networks. In this work, in order to improve the formation of these networks, we propose the use of models for allocating the population to different public health facilities and the enlargement or location of new ones when the capacity is insufficient. With information available to Mexico, the models were applied in five rural municipalities in Mexico State. The results were compared with the Operational Regionalization Study of Mexico State in 2001 and the Physical Infrastructure Master Plan in Health for Mexico State in 2010, with a significant reduction in distance traveled by the population, better equitable distribution in the different health facilities, and identification of candidate sites for opening new units were found, maximizing the coverage and improving the level of service.