'Seeking affluent neighbourhoods?' a time-trend analysis of geographical distribution of hospitals in the Megacity of Tehran.

Objective: Access to hospitals in megacities in low and middle income countries might be hampered by travel barriers and distance. We assessed the 'inverse care law' hypothesis: whether hospitals tended to be built in the relatively better-off areas through the time.

Methods: A longitudinal time-series study (1966 to 2011) in Tehran to measure inequality in the distribution of hospital beds.