The availability and distribution of dentists in rural ZIP codes and primary care health professional shortage areas (PC-HPSA) ZIP codes: Comparison with primary care providers

Objective: This paper maps dentists, primary care physicians, physician ass istants, nurse practitioners, and nurse midwives in rural areas and rural a reas meeting criteria as underserved for primary health care. Methods: Comp uter-based mapping was used to localize health care provider groups by five -digit ZIP code. For each rural and each rural primary care health professi onal shortage area (PC-HPSA) ZIP code, the number of providers in each grou p was determined. The different combinations of providers were determined R esults: All providers in rural areas were present at levels substantially l ower than national averages, particularly in PC-HPSA areas. Dentists were a pproximately equal in number to primary care physicians in rural areas and the largest group in PC-HPSAs. Approximately 75 percent of rural residents lived in ZIP code areas with dentists available. Over 5.8 million rural res idents and over 50 percent of rural PC-HPSA residents had no providers avai lable in their ZIP code areas. Conclusions: Rural areas continue to have a short supply of primary care providers and dentists. Dentists were present in many areas where primary care provider presence was absent or very low. These data, including those relating to provider co-presence, can be used t o develop strategies to overcome health care access problems due to provide r shortages.