Healthcare Access

Composite healthcare access score from nearby hospital access and county-level provider supply.

Scale0-100

Higher values rank better for this score.

How It's Calculated

The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.

1
Hospital Access uses open HIFLD hospital points within 75 miles, with distance decay and up to 12 contributing hospitals.
2
Hospital quality starts with HIFLD facility type and bed count, then blends in CMS star/outcome quality where the hospital can be confidently matched.
3
Emergency Care Access uses emergency-capable HIFLD hospitals within 100 miles, with trauma and helipad signals plus matched CMS ED timeliness where available.
4
Primary care blends County Health Rankings provider supply, HRSA primary-care HPSA shortage severity, and proximity to HRSA health center sites.
5
Mental-health provider and dental access blend County Health Rankings provider supply with HRSA discipline-specific HPSA shortage severity.
6
Specialist Access uses CMS Doctors and Clinicians specialty rows, filters out primary-care and behavioral-health specialties, maps practice ZIPs to counties through Census ZCTA relationships, deduplicates by NPI within county, smooths the rate, and percentile-ranks it.
7
The overall score is the weighted utility itself: 27% hospital access, 14% emergency care, 22% primary care, 13% mental-health provider access, 13% dental access, and 11% specialist access. Percentile rank is retained only as supporting context.

Technical details

Score TypeMaster Score

Read from the current master score table for this criterion.

Ranking BasisSingle Score

The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Healthcare Access.

No source details available for this score.

What This Score Means

Healthcare Access rewards places with nearby hospitals, emergency-capable hospitals, stronger county-level primary-care, mental-health, dental, and specialist supply, lower HRSA shortage severity, and nearby safety-net health centers.

Statistics Feeding This Score

Hospital proximity
Nearby open hospitals, top contributing hospitals, straight-line distance, and raw presence.
Source: HIFLD Hospitals
Hospital type and size
Facility type, bed count, trauma signal, and helipad status used as access and capability proxies.
Source: HIFLD Hospitals
CMS hospital quality
Overall star rating and better/no-different/worse outcome comparison counts, used where the HIFLD hospital can be confidently matched to CMS.
Source: CMS Hospital General Information
CMS emergency timeliness
Median emergency-department time, left-before-being-seen share, and ED volume, used where matched.
Source: CMS Timely and Effective Care - Hospital
County provider supply
Primary-care, mental-health provider, dentist, and specialist rates smoothed toward national supply before percentile ranking.
Source: County Health Rankings & Roadmaps
HRSA shortage designations
Primary care, dental, and mental-health HPSA severity scores used as official shortage signals.
Source: HRSA Health Professional Shortage Areas
Safety-net health centers
Active HRSA-funded health center sites, operating hours, site type, and proximity.
Source: HRSA Health Center Service Delivery Sites
Specialist availability
CMS Doctors and Clinicians specialty rows filtered, ZIP-to-county mapped, deduplicated by NPI, and smoothed as county specialist supply.
Source: CMS Doctors and Clinicians National Downloadable File

Source Data

Source: HIFLD HospitalsOpen U.S. hospital point locations and attributes such as facility type, beds, trauma signal, and helipad status.Source: CMS Hospital General InformationCMS Care Compare hospital directory, overall star rating, outcome comparison counts, hospital type, and emergency-services flag.Source: CMS Timely and Effective Care - HospitalCMS hospital measures including emergency-department median time, left-before-being-seen share, and ED volume.Source: County Health Rankings & RoadmapsCounty, state, and national public-health measures from the March 25, 2026 supplemental analytic release.Source: HRSA Health Professional Shortage AreasOfficial primary care, dental, and mental-health shortage designations with HPSA severity scores.Source: HRSA Health Center Service Delivery SitesHRSA-funded health center and look-alike service delivery sites with status, operating hours, site type, and coordinates.Source: CMS Doctors and Clinicians National Downloadable FileClinician practice-location records with NPI, ZIP, and primary specialty, used for county-level specialist supply after filtering and ZIP-to-county mapping.Source: Census ZCTA-to-county relationship file2020 Census relationship file used to map clinician ZIP/ZCTA values to a dominant county for specialist availability.

Known Limits

Hospital access still uses straight-line distance from a representative place point, not road travel time, ambulance routing, congestion, or parcel-level access.
CMS quality and ED timeliness are historical public reporting measures, not live wait times, real-time diversion status, or guarantees of care quality for a specific patient.
Provider and specialist supply are county-level signals and do not capture exact appointment availability, insurance networks, referral patterns, or neighborhood-level provider access.
Specialist availability uses CMS Doctors and Clinicians practice ZIPs mapped through Census ZCTA-county relationships, so ZIP-to-county assignment is approximate.
CMS warns that NPI issuance and clinician listing data are not a live validation of licensure, credentialing, insurance acceptance, or current capacity.

Top 10 Locations

Ranked by Healthcare Access.

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