Tuesday, January 05, 2016

Travel Times to ER


Health care reforms in Finland will result in only 12 hospitals operating around the clock emergency rooms. Nyheter has created an isochrone map which shows the likely time it will take to travel to an emergency room from any address in Finland, once the changes are implemented.

The 12 hospitals which will maintain around the clock emergency rooms are shown on the map with small black crosses. The x's on the map show the other eight hospitals which will maintain a less extensive on-call service.

The changes to emergency room cover in Finland mean that people living in Lapland, Eastern Finland, Western Uusimaa and parts of Swedish Ostrobothnia will face very long travel times before they will be able to get to a hospital with an around the clock emergency room.

The isochrone layer divides the country into 5 x 5 km (25 km2) boxes. Each box is colored to show the time it will take to travel by car to the nearest hospital with 24 hour emergency room cover. Unfortunately the isochrone layer hasn't been added to the map as a selectable layer, this means you can't turn the layer off to see the road map underneath. This wouldn't matter so much if the map included a search box to find your address on the map. As it is I'm guessing some users are going to struggle to determine under which 25 km2 square that they actually live.

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