Most secondary care health services in New Zealand, including computed tomography (CT) scanners, are concentrated in urban centres. Little is known about the access rural patients have to these services. The aim of this research was to determine whether there was geographic variation in the utilisation of CT across the southern part of the South Island and if present to measure the magnitude. Quantitative analysis of public hospital data for CTs over two twelve month periods (2007/08 and 2010) showed that residents of urban base hospital catchment areas were 1.6 times more likely to access CT services than residents of the catchment areas of remote rural hospitals. Similar disparities were present when the analysis was limited to the ≥70 yrs age group. The disparities were present regardless of the referral source or the type of scan but were greatest for emergency department referrals, head scans and CT pulmonary angiograms. Further research is needed to determine the causes of these differences and whether they result in differences in health outcomes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 July 2023.
All research outputs
#7,306,084
of 26,544,284 outputs
Outputs from Health Policy
#1,137
of 2,828 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#62,797
of 242,460 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Health Policy
#12
of 28 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,544,284 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,828 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 242,460 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 28 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 57% of its contemporaries.
