(2) Inequities in resources allocation
Although the proportions of bed to population and personnel to population
tend to be better in all regions and nationwide, the Bangkok/regional and Bangkok/
Northeast disparities prevail. This clearly indicates the inequities in resources allocation. In Bangkok, the bed/population ratio is 1:199 and the doctor/population ratio
is 1:760, compared to the national average of 1:455 and 1:3,395, respectively; and
in the Northeast such ratios are 1:780 and 1:8,116, respectively (Table 1.2).
Inequities in health care are also found in terms of the diffusion of medical and
health technologies. For instance, in the case of CT scanner distribution for every
one million population, in Bangkok there are 14.8 CT scanners, while there are only
2.8 machines in the provincial areas, 1.8 machines in the Northeast, and 3.9 machines
nationwide.
For regional comparison, if an index of one is assigned for the lowest CTscanner
to population ratio in the Northeast, the discrepancy index in Bangkok would
be 8.6. In other words, the gap of discrepancy index in Bangkok is 8.6-fold in
relation to that in the Northeast. The nationwide index is 2.3. Such indices have
shown inequalities of medical technology diffusion (Table 1.5), which tend to be
improving.