Primary Care Physicians in Alabama

February 2020

This project studies the demographics and the geometric distribution of primary care physicians (PCPs) in Alabama, with a particular emphasis on the rural/urban dichotomy. Most importantly, we also consider ways of measuring the need for PCPs in healthcare service areas using a supply and demand model that is based on the demographics of the population in the service area.

Primary Care Physicians

We use a rather strict definition of a Primary Care Physician (PCP) based on the traditional model of continuity of care. A great deal of our work goes into identifying those physicians practicing primary care and determining the extent of their practice. For this study, a PCP is a physician practicing in

For some purposes, OB/Gyn physicians are also considered primary care, but we study these physicians in another project and so do not consider them here. We exclude physicians in one of the specialties above who are not practicing primary care. For example, we do not count

Ultimately, we do not want to count the PCPs themselves, but rather Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) primary care physicians. We define an FTE as a PCP who works 40 hours per week in direct patient care for 48 weeks per year. So a semi-retired physician would count as a fractional FTE. Other examples are

Demographics

In this project we study the demographics of PCPs, again with emphasis on rural PCPs and urban PCPs.

Geographic Distribution

We are particularly interested in how PCPs are distributed geographically. We study the distribution through graphs and interactive tables by

In addition, each of this distributions is given visually as a layer in an interactive map.

Computing PCP Need

We give two different models for determining the number of PCP FTEs needed for a service area. Both use estimates of primary care need per year in a service area based on the age distribution in the service area, and estimates of primary care service that an FTE can provide. One model uses visits and the other uses time.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations to this study, particularly with regard to the PCP need computations:

The information and data presented in this project are provided as a service to the educational and healthcare communities. Although care was taken in gathering the data at the time of posting, no warranties are expressed or implied as to the correctness or usefulness of the material. Moreover, the project should be viewed as a snapshot in time. Inevitably, the further from the time of posting the less accurate the data will be.

Sources