Population Health Data Added To AMA's Health Workforce Mapper
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Feature includes information on healthcare access and quality by geographic location.
The American Medical Association (AMA) announced the launch of an enhanced version of Health Workforce Mapper that features a geospatial mapping tool. The new tool not only illustrates the geographic locations of healthcare workers in each state, it provides population health data by geographic location. This includes healthcare access and quality, health behaviors like alcohol use or smoking, demographics, and social environment factors.
“Improving patient access to quality care is a core mission of the AMA,” said Andrew W. Gurman, M.D. and AMA President. “This mapping tool will show physicians and healthcare professionals precisely where their skills can most benefit populations in need.”
The new tool specifically provides information that can identify healthcare shortage areas, hospital locations, and other workforce trends. “Knowing where healthcare services are needed most can help providers make the best decisions on where to locate or expand their practices to reach patients in greatest need of access to care,” Gurman said.
Access to the basic tool — which is customizable, interactive, and designed to help ensure access to quality healthcare across the country — is free. There is also a comprehensive version of the tool available to AMA members that includes the capacity to export a customizable Excel file that ranks health workforce and demographic data by county.
According to the AMA, The Health Workforce Mapper can help demonstrate both deficiency and overlap, as well as identify high-priority areas for workforce expansion. This allows users to demonstrate to law- or policy-makers the geographic location and distribution of healthcare providers across the nations, in order to make appropriate, evidence-based decisions. It also helps identify areas of potential need for particular types of healthcare in order to create workforce strategies to expand patient access to care.
The original tool was designed to show just availability of healthcare services across various locations. The AMA partnered with the American Academy of Family Physicians Robert Graham Center and HealthLandscape to develop the tool.