Correlation Engine 2.0
Clear Search sequence regions


Sizes of these terms reflect their relevance to your search.

To compare measures of spatial access to care commonly used by policy makers and researchers with the more comprehensive enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method. Fourteen southwestern Pennsylvania counties. We estimated spatial access to buprenorphine-waivered prescribers using three commonly used measures-Euclidean travel distance to the closest prescriber, travel time to the closest provider, and provider-to-population ratios-and the E2SFCA. Unlike other measures, the E2SFCA captures provider capacity, potential patient volume, and travel time to prescribers. We measured provider capacity as the number of buprenorphine prescribers listed at a given address in the Drug Enforcement Agency's 2020 Controlled Substances Act Registrants Database, and we measured potential patient volume as the number of nonelderly adults in a given census tract as reported by the 2018 American Community Survey. We estimated travel times between potential patients and prescribers with Bing Maps and Mapbox application programming interfaces. We then calculated each spatial access measure using the R programming language. We used each measure of spatial access to identify census tracts in the lowest quintile of spatial access to prescribers. The Euclidean distance, travel time, and provider-to-population ratio measures identified 48.3%, 47.2%, and 69.9% of the census tracts that the E2SFCA measure identified as being in the lowest quintile of spatial access to care, meaning that these measures misclassify 30%-52% of study area census tracts as having sufficient spatial access to buprenorphine prescribers. Measures of spatial access commonly used by policy makers do not sufficiently accurately identify geographic areas with relatively low access to prescribers of buprenorphine. Using the E2SFCA in addition to the commonly used measures would allow policy makers to precisely target interventions to increase spatial access to opioid use disorder treatment and other types of health care services. © 2021 Health Research and Educational Trust.

Citation

Coleman Drake, Dylan Nagy, Thuy Nguyen, Kevin L Kraemer, Christina Mair, David Wallace, Julie Donohue. A comparison of methods for measuring spatial access to health care. Health services research. 2021 Oct;56(5):777-787

Expand section icon Mesh Tags

Expand section icon Substances


PMID: 34250592

View Full Text