CHICAGO — The American Medical Association (AMA) today launched a newly enhanced version of its Health Workforce Mapper with updated data to further help physicians and other health care providers improve patient access to care.
In addition to illustrating the geographic locations of the health care work force in each state, including physician specialties and subspecialties, the tool provides population health data by geographic location. The “Population Health Explorer” feature offers data on a variety of population health factors, including health care access and quality, health behaviors such as smoking and alcohol use, demographics, and social environment factors. This feature enables users to not only see where the physicians of the country practice, but overlay where the patients are located, and the factors that influence their health and access to care.
“The AMA is committed to improving patient access to high-quality care. With the updated mapping tool, physicians and health care professionals will be able to more precisely and easily pinpoint the areas and populations which could benefit most from their skills and services,” said AMA President Barbara L. McAneny, M.D. “Providers can use this information to help them determine where to locate or expand their practices to reach patients in greatest need of access to care.”
Specifically, the AMA’s Health Workforce Mapper tool gives physicians and other health care providers information—using reliable AMA data as well as data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—to identify health professional shortage areas, hospital locations, as well as other related workforce trends.
In addition, the tool can help new physicians close the gap in patient access to care by giving residents and medical students access to important information that allows them to see, from state-to-state, where there are shortages in certain medical specialties.
The newly enhanced tool, developed in collaboration with the American Academy of Family Physicians Robert Graham Center and HealthLandscape, is available to the public free of charge via the AMA website.
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About the American Medical Association
The American Medical Association is the physicians’ powerful ally in patient care. As the only medical association that convenes 190+ state and specialty medical societies and other critical stakeholders, the AMA represents physicians with a unified voice to all key players in health care. The AMA leverages its strength by removing the obstacles that interfere with patient care, leading the charge to prevent chronic disease and confront public health crises and, driving the future of medicine to tackle the biggest challenges in health care.
