“…As the first law of geography describes that everything is related to everything else, and near things are more related than distant things ( 57 , 58 ), with the more and more obvious spatial trend of humanities and social sciences and the increasingly mature spatial econometric analysis methods, more and more scholars begin to pay attention to spatial dependence, spatial heterogeneity, spatial clustering, and other spatial effects in the study of regional economic growth ( 59 ), environmental and resource efficiency ( 60 ), innovation development ( 61 ), ecological welfare ( 62 ), etc. Moreover, spatial dependence is introduced to identify local spatial cluster and outlier effects of healthcare events ( 63 ), healthcare service industry ( 43 , 64 ), and healthcare facilities ( 65 , 66 ). Although the development of healthcare in the Yangtze River Delta cities is somewhat spatially dependent due to their geographical proximity and similar socioeconomic conditions, the supply of healthcare service is deeply influenced by multidimensional factors that vary considerably across regions and time periods.…”