BOOKS OF RtfiDIfGS - PAHO/WHO

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HINDLE that all tlie primary medical care needs of those perons whose family
tT AL incomes are $15,000 or greater arc expresed as demands for physician
servics-that i¡a, economic feasibility is indexed as a functijn of their
satisfied demand for ervices (»e Table for a]culationf).
The following logarithmic function is used to calculate the eco.
nomic feasibility index for each servic area:
FEAS, =oax In(l)+ b
wlhere FEAS i¡ the index of economic leasibility (expreued as a percentage)
for service area j, I is average family income in service arca j,
and a and b are cosants to be atimated by regression analysis. The
values of 1 used wer tbe midpoints of the income categories except
for the highest category, for which $15,000 was used. Uaing the data
in Table 5, regression analyas yielded values of 0.274 and -1.68 for
a and b, rapecaively, with an lS of 0.955.
The interpretaion of these calculation ia that 100-FEASj is
the porio of tb potential den d in a service are that does not
bcoome expreued demand because of the monetary cost of primary
hcalth are.
4. ComputM Ihe Potentlh Demand. Potential demand ui the ned
for primary halth care as expericed by the population. disregarding
factor that could interfere with satifaction of that need [112,1].
This tbhe demand the population would place on the provider of
primay cdre the cost of obaining such care, both monetary and
no me cty , ee aro and, of course, auming that the population
l uniformly able to reco~el conditioa for which medical care ia
Potenial demand bi conderd bere as a lunction of two charactaik
of he populatio: age aMd need for car (15, 25-29]. The
idml populuoua aiunaed to have the ame age distribution as the
mute of Indiana. The average utilization rate for the ideal popula.
tion of ldiana (