New benchmarking data from physician search firm Merritt Hawkins has painted an overall picture of what physician access looks like in each state.
The Physician Access Index uses 33 variables — including physicians per capita in the state, physicians trained per capita, physician assistants and nurse practitioners per capita, percent of the population with health insurance, physician Medicare and Medicaid acceptance rates, household income, urgent care centers and retail clinics per capita and percent of physicians close to retirement — to show those states in which patients are most and least likely to be able to access physicians easily.
Highlighted below are three things to know about physician access from the report.
1. The five states with the most positive physician access variables are Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware and Maryland.
2. The five states with the least positive physician access variables are Oklahoma, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Mississippi.
3. Nine of the top 10 states with the most positive physician access variables are located in the Northeast region of the country
For more information on physician access, check out the Merritt Hawkins infographics below.