Where to enhance rural palliative care? Developing a spatial model to identify suitable communities most in need of service enhancement

Table 2 The elements of the community readiness component for the SPCH SSM. See referenced papers for more detail on scoring

Variable	Measure (Yes/No)	Data sources
Community awareness	Presence of local hospice society	Community websites; BC Hospice Palliative Care Association listings
Training and education	Presence of local college or university	Maximum 1 h drive time to college or university. List of facilities collated using the Association of Accredited Universities and Colleges of Canada website
Telemedicine utilization	Regular use of telemedicine^a	Confirmation from administrators at local hospitals of regular telemedicine use.
Adequate supply of family doctors	Family physician to population ratio: at most 1307 persons per physician	Number of family physicians: MDSelect database Population: Statistics Canada Census data
Momentum	Expression of interest for local hospice	Confirmation from local hospice(s) of discussions or proposals for local hospice residence

^aFor the purposes of this study, telemedicine is considered the provision of clinical support to local health care providers through use of information and communication technologies [39, 40]

ISSN: 1472-6963