ABSTRACT
The extent of the contribution of health care services to the well-being of the human population is not known with certainty, but it is certain that people would be far worse off without it. Nowhere is the problem of organising hospital services more apparent than in large cities where increasingly more of the world's population lives. It is useful to make a broad distinction at the stage between societies that are urbanising and those which are de-urbanising. In the former, supply problems in health care systems often arise because of needs generated by the vast influx of rural poor into urban areas. In more concise terms, the basic objective is therefore to develop a theoretical framework for exploring patterns of hospital provision from the standpoint of location. Existing locational theory provides a good basis for discussing the problem of locating hospitals in cities, but because of the special nature of health care system it is deficient in several respects.
