Adequate and equitable access to healthcare services by local communities in urban fringe zones is an important issue of human service provision to both public policy makers and urban planners. Accessibility to a service can be differentiated spatially, temporally and/or socio-economically. Spatial accessibility is location-based and spatially constrained. Spatial accessibility to a destination location by an agent from a source location via a specified network that linking the source and destination locations can be measured in terms of physical distance, travel time, or travel cost. GIS has been widely used for the measurement of spatial accessibility. This paper presents our efforts in the development of a GIS based approach to the characterization of spatial accessibility to healthcare services by local communities in urban fringe zones in Australia, based on the characterisation of both the users and the providers of healthcare services and the transportation network that links them.