America’s Primary Care Shortage: Update
A few weeks ago I posted a map of primary care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) that I’d poached from the New Health Dialogue blog. The source data for the map was from 2008. Well, I didn’t realize how easy it would be to find a new map with 2010 data. Until, you know, I looked:
This map comes from the Rural Assistance Center and is based on April 2010 data from the Health Resources and Services Administration.
This update was prompted by a question in comments about whether the primary care shortage designation takes account of nurse practitioners or physicians’ assistants in addition to MDs. As best I can tell from this notice in the Federal Register (pdf) and from the Health Resources and Services Administration website, it does not. The designation of a Primary Care HPSA is based on the ratio of population to primary care physicians—MDs or DOs (doctors of osteopathic medicine)—plus other factors (poverty rate, distance to nearest provider, rates of infant mortality and low birth weight).
However, the Recovery Act does make funds available to deploy mid-level clinical workers (like NPs, PAs, psych counselors, dental hygienists, etc.) from the National Health Service Corps to shortage areas. The darker red spots on the map represent the areas of greatest need, and those are the areas with highest priority for NHSC deployments.
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