Hospital service areas in Ibadan city.

The catchment areas of the eighteen study hospitals in Ibadan city were identified by the use of the distribution of sampled hospital patients and the distribution of the proportion of patients using the hospitals from each census tract. In the first approach, it was not possible to talk of definable service areas of the hospitals. On the other hand, the second approach revealed well defined service areas for individual hospital as well as groups of hospitals based on their hierarchical order. It was concluded that the service areas of the hospitals in Ibadan city are well defined. The areas most proximate to the hospitals sent the highest proportion of patients. The relevance of the results of the study to identification of the parts of the city not well served by hospitals was also discussed.