Daily mobility of disabled people for healthcare facilities and their accessibility in urban space

Abstract

This paper presents findings from an empirical study of diurnal trips made by disabled people to healthcare facilities distributed across urban space. The study was carried out in the city of Bydgoszcz, Poland, while the subsequent analysis is based on the authors’ inventory of healthcare facilities and interviews. Data athered from interviews with 450 disabled people plus 150 able-bodied members of the same households bring out great differences in daily mobility between the two social categories. The daily mobility of disabled people in relation to healthcare is much more tangible than that involving their non-disabled counterparts. Disabled people opt to commute further and for a longer time to the establishments providing comprehensive medical services of high quality, even if the architectural availability of some of these facilities is unsatisfactory. In contrast, their able-bodied counterparts mostly choose general practitioners situated near to their home areas, rather than travelling to more-distant specialists.