Socio-spatial perspectives on the utilization of emergency hospital services in two urban territories in Quebec

Hospital emergency services located in urban areas have been severely congested for several years in the province of Quebec. This problem is not caused by ambulatory patients who are using emergency services as a regular source of care, but by patients in need of emergency services. To study the factors affecting the utilization rates of emergency services in two urban areas, the city of Laval and the Quebec metropolitan area, two samples of more than 30,000 patients each were drawn from the 1981 file of the Régie de l'assurance-maladie du Quebec. The utilization rates of emergency services for emergent and urgent causes in these two samples were computed on the basis of the census tract location of these patients. The soci-economic characteristics of these census tracts were taken from the 1981 Canadian census, the distance travelled from each census tract to the location of hospital emergency services was computed and included as a predicator of the utilization rates. Also, the prevalence of chronic and psychiatric diagnoses were obtained for each census tract. The result of the analysis showed that distance affected the utilization rates only in the Quebec metropolitan area where the hospitals are mostly located in the downtown area near deprived and working class neighbourhoods, while the socio-economic characteristics affected the utilization rates in both Quebec and Laval.