Mapping Health Care Delivery for Children Using Primary Care Service Areas

As part of an effort to develop a national database of primary care (i.e., office-based or outpatient care) resources and health services, the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School has developed small, standardized geographic markets that reflect primary care utilization. These areas are called Primary Care Service Areas (PCSAs). PCSAs are defined by assigning U.S. Census 2000 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas to primary care providers based on the primary care utilization of Medicare beneficiaries.

For online information on the PCSA project, visit PCSA project Web site.

The uneven geographic distribution of health care services remains one of the important challenges facing U.S. health policy makers. In the area of children’s health, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has partnered with the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School to develop an interactive Web-based database that will be used to improve the provision of pediatric care by supplying information on the demographics, socioeconomic status, and geographic distribution of children and providers of pediatric care.

Using primary care service areas as the geographic unit, the project will identify patterns in demographics, physician supply, geographic distributions of primary care pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists, and locations of federally funded health clinics. In a first release of the data, online U.S. and state AAP maps with associated data tables are viewable here.