Distance to Radiotherapy and Demand – Projection of the Effects of Establishing New Radiotherapy Facilities in Poland by 2025

In 2015, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Poland introduced the Polish strategic plan for radiotherapy development and investment. Given that radiotherapy utilisation depends on the distance a patient must travel to undergo the treatment, the main goal of the plan was to increase equitable access to radiotherapy in Poland by establishing new facilities in new locations by 2025. This study constitutes the first step towards an economic evaluation of this plan by adopting spatial interaction models to project the expected increase in the demand for radiotherapy (3%). Moreover, it adds to the current research on the relation between distance and demand for healthcare services in the following ways. First, it flags the importance of using spatial econometrics to healthcare utilisation studies in the presence of spatial autocorrelation. Furthermore, it proposes a quantitative method for assessing the expected impact of establishing new facilities on utilisation. Finally, it formally confirms the dependence between radiotherapy utilisation and distance in Poland, which has been previously shown to exist in other countries.