Accessibility of healthcare services in Czechia
with a focus on rural areas

The main objective of this bachelor theses is to analyse and evaluate the accessibility of healthcare services in the Czech Republic with a focus on rural areas. The theses aims to identify regional disparities and analyse the accessibility of five selected categories of healthcare services in the Czech Republic – general practitioners, dentistry, gynaecology, pharmacies, hospitals and polyclinics, with subsequent limitation of the area of interest to rural areas. The theses also includes the socio-economic context and its influence on the accessibility of healthcare services, which may affect people's decision to migrate. The theses employs quantitative methods, specifically aggregation methods, network analysis, and primarily the advanced tool for calculating the Enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (E2SFCA), which was developed specifically for calculating the accessibility of healthcare facilities in the healthcare sector. The results of the theses show that the problem of low accessibility of healthcare services is still widespread in rural areas of the Czech Republic. It is also important to note that not all rural areas suffer from inadequate access to healthcare services. The bachelor theses identifies these problematic areas with low accessibility of healthcare services and proposes possible steps to improve the situation in the most affected areas.