Visualizing the healthcare workforce of the United States

Background: A nation's health is only as good as its healthcare workforce and it is vital that we understand the distribution of the workforce in order to ensure access to healthcare for all United States Citizens as mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Utilizing geographic information systems and online interactive data display tools is one way in which this task can be accomplished in order to assist in important policy decisions to address shortages in the workforce. Objectives: To inform policy decisions addressing healthcare workforce shortages through the utilization of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) National Plan & Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) and the visualization of the primary care physician workforce. Methods: The locations of selected primary care physicians in the NPPES dataset were geocoded and aggregating to US Census Geographies. Results: From this filtered dataset, the US primary care physician workforce can be displayed at the state, county, or Census Tract level, within metropolitan areas. Additional qualifiers, such as physician gender, or population to physician ratio thresholds, can be selected by users of this online mapping and data display tool for analysis of potential shortages of physicians. Discussion: Through the utilization of the freely available NPPES data and display of primary care physicians locations by Census Geographies, important policy decisions can be made in order to identify, and encourage policy driven corrections to, shortages in the primary care physician workforce.