Category Archives: Health Care Access

The Evolution of Disparities in Spatial Access to Social Services in the U.S., 1990 to 2014

To address patient’s unmet social needs and improve health outcomes, health systems have developed programs to refer patients in need to social service agencies. However, the capacity to respond to patient referrals varies tremendously across communities. To understand how disparities … Continue reading

Posted in Economic Development, Health Care Access, Social Determinants, Socioeconomic status, Transportation | Leave a comment

Maintaining patient privacy while geocoding patient addresses: Do Not Use R to Geocode

Imagine if a clinical researcher were to disclose a list of patient addresses to a third-party – government agency, for profit company or not-for-profit entity – that was outside of their hospital or health system. Imagine the researcher then publicly … Continue reading

Posted in Health Care Access, Methods, Tools | Leave a comment

Updated: County Level Estimates of Highly Stressed Health Care Systems

Our online mapping tool has been updated with new data showing counties that are at high risk of experiencing patient volumes that exceed their hospital capacity over the next 6 weeks.  The maps show at risk counties for three different levels … Continue reading

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County Level Estimates of When Hospital Capacity will be Overwhelmed

We have been working as part of a multi-institution team to make county level estimates for the U.S. of the time until health systems are overwhelmed with patients.  The analyses use a 28 day look forward window from 3/24/2020 and … Continue reading

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Estimated ICU Beds Available to Respond to Patient Surges

In collaboration with Charles Branas in the Department of Epidemiology and colleagues from Patient Insight, the Mount Sinai Health System and MIT, we have been working to estimate the number of hospital critical care beds, including ICU beds and other … Continue reading

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At Risk Populations for Severe COVID-19, Part IV

Our geographer extraordinaire, James Quinn, built a new version of our interactive mapping tool for severe COVID-19.  The map depicts populations at high risk of severe COVID-19 due to older age or underlying health conditions, the availability of ICU beds … Continue reading

Posted in Health Care Access, Tools | 1 Comment

At Risk Populations for Severe COVID-19, part III

We have continued our partnership with PolicyMap.Com and they created us an interactive mapping widget that shows the data on populations at risk of severe COVID-19.  The at risk populations we mapped are: the number of people 65 years and … Continue reading

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At Risk Populations for Severe COVID-19, part II

We have continued to work with Policymap.com‘s excellent data portal tool to map populations at risk of severe COVID-19.  Our prior post is here.  The map below shows Counties in purple with high numbers of adults 65 years or older … Continue reading

Posted in Adults, Community Needs Assessment, Health Care Access | Leave a comment

At Risk Populations for Severe COVID-19

Like the vast majority of the world, we have been obsessing over the COVID-19 pandemic.  Given that certain populations are at risk for severe COVID-19 disease we have been wondering where the at risk populations are in the U.S.  To … Continue reading

Posted in Adults, Community Needs Assessment, Health Care Access | Leave a comment

When geographic proximity and access to medical services is not enough

Although many health determinants are outside of the health care sector, quality health care is crucial to population health.  Recently, we included a look at perceptions of local health care as part of a community needs assessment (https://beh.columbia.edu/community-needs-assessment/) in Rio … Continue reading

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