Ambulance Deserts and Health Care Deserts
These story maps created within ArcGIS illustrate the intersection of ambulance deserts (ADs) and health care deserts (HCDs) across all 41 states included in the original ambulance deserts chartbook. This project builds on the Maine Rural Health Research Center's work identifying ADs, defined as populated census blocks that are outside of a 25-minute drive time from a ground ambulance station.
In addition to having limited access to ambulance services, rural residents may encounter obstacles in accessing inpatient or primary health care. Researchers address this issue in a series of maps identifying HCDs, defined as populated areas within each state that are outside of a 30-minute access standard to a health care facility. For this study, researchers included health care facilities that are certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to serve the needs of Medicare and Medicaid populations: short-term acute care hospitals, Critical Access Hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and Rural Health Clinics (RHCs). Many of these facilities are either located in low volume rural areas or they are considered safety net clinics.
This data set considers all areas with at least 2,000 housing units or at least 5,000 people to be urban; rural areas are defined as those that do not fit into the urban definition. In addition to highlighting areas that are ADs and HCDs, researchers illustrate the locations of the hospitals, FQHCs, and RHCs, and quantify the number and percentage of people living in ADs and/or HCDs in a table within each of the state maps.