Objectives: To find the geographical accessibility of primary care services and their support facilities.
Design: An observational, crossover study.
Setting: Primary health care.
Patients or other participants: All those collective and single population groupings (354), included in the population register of the Murcia region with 100 or more inhabitants listed or with less inhabitants but with a health care post.
Measurements and main results: The time (crona) taken by the population of the different health districts and areas of the region to reach primary care and support services was determined by direct observation. Crona was defined as the average of three measurements of the time taken to reach these services by people using their normal means of transport and not exceeding the highway code's speed limits. 335 care posts were counted. Only 1,56% of the population, all belonging to Health Area 4, needed more than 30 minutes to reach their local doctor. 18,36% of the population needed more than 30 minutes to reach their referral hospitals.
Conclusions: The number and distribution of facilities in the health care network guarantee adequate access to their services, except in Area 4. Specific studies will have to be designed to check that access problems are connected more to the road network and transport used than to the number and location of care centres.