Introduction: Health care is one of the most important sectors in the development of each country and disparities in their distribution
will reduce the level of development. The aim of this study was to examine the access to healthcare and degree of development in health
care resources in the west of Iran in 2011.
Method: This was a cross-sectional and retrospective study. The study setting was 51 cities of five western provinces of Iran, including
Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Ilam, Lorestan and Hamadan. For assessing these towns in terms of the degree of development in healthcare
resources by the numerical taxonomy technique, 23 indicators of health resources were selected and obtained from the statistics
yearbook. The data was analyzed by EXCEL software.
Results:Our study showed that the highest and lowest access to health care based on numerical taxonomy belonged to cities of
Kermanshah (0.61) and Salas Babajani (1.07). Also, most towns of Ilam, Lorestan and Kurdistan provinces are underdeveloped and
developing, while the most towns of Kermanshah and Hamadan provinces were placed in the developed region.
Conclusion: This study showed that there was a large gap between the cities of one province and also among the provinces in terms
of the access to and degree of development in health care resources. Therefore, it is suggested that a higher priority in terms of health
resource allocation should be placed on the developing and underdeveloped areas in order to reduce these disparities.