Primary Care Infrastructure in Rural America

The proposed study aims to answer the following questions:

1. How many rural counties lacked a core primary care safety-net provider (e.g., Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Rural Health Clinic (RHC), Critical Access Hospital (CAH), Rural Emergency Hospital (REH), or other hospital type) in 2023?
2. What are the current health, socioeconomic, behavioral, environmental, and health care access characteristics of rural counties without each and any of the primary care safety-net providers?
3. To what extent does county-level primary care infrastructure overlap with Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), and Medically Underserved Areas/Populations (MUAs/MUPs)?

By examining the presence and absence of FQHCs, RHCs, CAHs, and REHs together, the project can help distinguish counties lacking primary care access points from those also lacking nearby emergency or hospital-based infrastructure and counties that lack multiple components of rural safety-net facilities, thereby supporting more targeted rural health care resource planning decisions.