For Immediate Release: November 9, 1999
Contact: Hali Wickner (603) 650-1520
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Dartmouth to Create Primary Care Network
HANOVER, NH An innovative national geographic information system under development at Dartmouth Medical School's Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences will allow health policy makers and analysts to track primary care resources and patient services.
DMS has been awarded $1.5 million, effective October 1, from the Bureau of Health Professions and the Bureau of Primary Health Care to provide a comprehensive and sophisticated database of primary care that could be a major planning tool for medical care.
The project, directed by Dr. David Goodman, associate professor of pediatrics and of community and family medicine, will develop primary care service areas (PCSAs) that represent locales of primary care clinicians and the populations served. Its methods build on the pioneering small-area analysis techniques of Dr. John Wennberg, Peggy Y. Thomson Professor of Evaluative Clinical Sciences at DMS, that resulted in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care.
"Using Medicare and Medicaid claims files that contain enormous quantities of data, we will tabulate primary care utilization to define health service areas. Additional data sources will then be incorporated to characterize the resources and the health outcomes within those areas," says Goodman. "We anticipate that the characteristics of these areas will vary widely; a rich set of information tools and ongoing primary care data will enable analysts to understand what is happening in any particular set of areas but within a national context. The database is an investment in the health care evaluation infrastructure."
The researchers aim to create a framework linked to federal and state policy analysts and to health researchers over the Internet. Users will be able to map the information, view tables and download data onto their own computers. Nine pilot states representing diverse population geographies, race/ethnicity composition and health status were selected for initial testing: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Kansas and Utah. PCSAs for the entire country are expected to be completed by the end of the first year.
Using the geographic database, planners will be able to look at both ends of the primary care supply spectrum to pinpoint areas with high and low per capita numbers of providers and determine the benefits or drawbacks of varying levels of physician supply. More physicians may mean more care, but whether or not that always brings greater benefits to patients is uncertain, Goodman notes.
