To evaluate the spatial accessibility of various types of healthcare institutions in an urban district of a prefecture-level city in the Yangtze River Delta, in order to provide a basis for optimizing healthcare service allocation.

This study obtained 2024 healthcare facility data and population data for each subdistrict (town) through secondary data collection, and gathered population spatial distribution data and road traffic data from public service platforms. The Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method based on a Gaussian decay function was used to assess the accessibility levels of different healthcare institutions within the district.

Within a 15-minute drive, 42.5% of demand points cannot access primary healthcare institutions and are classified as inaccessible areas. Comprehensive specialty healthcare institutions exhibit a clustered distribution in the southeastern region, indicating significant regional disparities in development. Dental service institutions demonstrate overall good accessibility; however, resource levels remain notably insufficient in the northwestern region. Accessibility to rehabilitation service institutions is relatively balanced overall, though areas requiring improvement still exist in the northwest.

The distribution pattern of medical institutions in city districts is “dense in urban areas and sparse in suburbs”, and the results of the accessibility of various types of medical institutions are different, so the results of this study can provide a reference for other cities to evaluate the spatial allocation of medical resources.