Although poor city neighborhoods are where the sickest people live, physicians and hospitals are leaving these areas to go to more affluent areas, according to a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently did an analysis using data from the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The analysis shows residents who live in poor neighborhoods are not as healthy as people who live in affluent areas, yet their areas are more likely to have physician shortages and closed hospitals, according to the report.
Specifically, almost two-thirds of the approximately 230 hospitals that opened since 2000 are in places that are wealthier, and often suburban, according to the report.
The report also states nearly 150 nonprofit hospitals and 53 for-profit hospitals closed in the largest American cities between 1990 and 2010.
Additionally, the data analysis addressed the number of physicians in these poor areas. The analysis shows more than 50 percent of the federally designated "primary care shortage areas" in more than 50 major metropolitan areas "fall in census tracts of highest poverty," according to the report.
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