Assessing the Allocation of Special Elderly Nursing Homes in Tokyo, Japan

Social welfare and public health departments require reliable assessments to enhance the rationality of phased construction of special elderly nursing homes (SENHs). This paper aims to assess the allocation of SENHs based on a beds-needed index for SENHs (BNIS). This may help departments determine the priority for approving locations of SENHs more accurately with a limited budget. Traditional assessments in Tokyo use the sphere of welfare, ward, and sphere of daily life as spatial units for estimating beds-to-elderly population ratios. We calculate the BNIS by introducing a parameter-improved floating catchment area method (PI-FCA) at a smaller spatial unit, the Chome. In the PI-FCA, the catchment area is generated according to the standard of average population served by SENHs and capacity, the population demand is the population of the elderly requiring care levels 3–5 and is further modified by a coefficient of potential demand via building a multivariate linear model. Improved results were obtained using the PI-FCA. Finally, this study maps the distribution of the degree of BNIS, to provide a basis for the allocation assessment of SENHs. This caters to the needs of departments and is easily applicable in other public healthcare facilities.