Access to healthcare and transportation are critical for a person’s health. However, lack of accessibility to personal and public modes of transport can significantly hinder a person’s ability to seek medical care when needed. This is because transportation is the means by which people are moved from one place to another, whether for work, school, recreation or to get to their medical appointments.
The literature on the topic of healthcare and transportation notes that distance is a common hurdle in accessing medical services. This is mainly because of long travel times that may be required to reach healthcare clinics and providers for routine checkups or emergency visits.
Other barriers include time constraints, cost and inconvenient schedules or times of day when medical clinics are open for appointments. The literature also notes that people who have limited resources, such as low income individuals, are more likely to report transportation barriers than those who have a high socio-economic status.
A major limitation of most studies on transportation barriers to healthcare is that they rely on self-report data. It would be beneficial to have objective outcome measures such as missed appointment rates and medication adherence to better understand the effects of transportation barriers on health outcomes. Collaborations between hospitals and healthcare organizations, urban planners, and transportation experts could result in solutions that provide community-based point of care and address both healthcare and transport needs in an equitable manner. These would include school and workplace based primary healthcare clinics, mobile healthcare, home visits and telehealth. access to healthcare and transportation