| China is undergoing the reform of rural healthcare system. The key issues are the New Rural Cooperatives Medical Service System and the promotion a three-level medial service system. As a public service system, the healthcare reform and planning is not only to sovle existing problems in healthcare, but also to balance the efficiency of facility utilization and the equality of resource allocation. The paper aims to explore the spatial equality and long term planning of medical facilities in rural areas using GIS, spatial accessibility analysis and Huff model.The case study area is Lankao County, Henan Province, and 21 township and county hospitals are selected as study samples. First, a systematic investigation is carried out to collect all the relevant reliable data, such as administrative broundary, population, medical facilities' location and traffic network. The geospatial database is designed to organize the data. Second, five spatial accessibility indices, i.e. medical facilities per capita, distance to the nearest medical service provider, hospitals' attractions and their improved attractions, chances to patronage certain hospitals, are calculated to evaluate the spatial accessibility of the medical facilities in 669 villages, Lankao County. Third, considering each hospital's location, capability and potential population serviced, Huff model is developed and calibrated to estimate the relationship between hospitals and village residents. Huff model results provide a basis for local medical planning, resources allocation and reallocation of some hospitals. Forth, all the indicators derived from accessibility models and Huff model and mapped, compared and explained carefully. Especially, the locations with insufficient or unqualified medical facilities are analyzed critically according to site investigation.GIS technology is fully used to the spatial analysis and modeling. All the geospatial data are prepared and managed in ArcGIS 9.2. The matrix of shortest traffic distance between hospitals and villages is created in Visual Basic IDE by ArcObjects programming. The distance matrix lays a foundation of accessibility analysis and Huff model estimation. There are several findings from case study. First, there is evident medical facility inequity in rural areas in terms of medical resource per capita, opportunity for accessing medical services and the convenience of utilizing medical services. Second, the indices of spatial accessibility can facilitate straightforward evaluation of the medical services, the convenience for visiting hospitals and the locations with insufficient or unqualified medical facilities are analyzed critically according to site investigation. Third, Huff model can simulate the flow of residents' patronage of hospitals, and calculate the potential population in service regions. So it conveniently indicates the efficiency of the use of medical resources and the problems therein. Forth, with the help of GIS, Geodatabase for medical resource planning can be created, together with all kinds of thematic maps, which not only can be used to evaluate the spatial accessibility of medical facilities, but also endowed with great potential for the application in medical resource planning of rural areas.
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