Distribution of private practice offices of physicians with specified characteristics among urban neighborhoods

Abstract

The office location of New York County physicians in private practice is determined for a verified subpopulation of the "Medical Directory of New York State" listing for the year 1970-71. Physicians are categorized by specialty status, medical schools attended, dates of graduation, and hospital affiliations. Multiple regression analysis is performed to relate numbers of physicians per Health Area (average population: 20,000) to demographic, economic, and medical care characteristics of the areas. There is considerable unevenness in the number of private physician offices among Health Areas (mean, 66; standard deviation, 173; range, 1 to 1,043). Multiple regression analysis shows a strong, positive association between practice location and median area income. The influence of population size on practice location is also found to be significant for many categories of physicians but less strong than that of income. Other independent variables are found to have a weaker to nonsignificant impact on practice location. Disaggregation of physicians into specified categories reveals differences in elasticity of location estimates that would have gone undetected had only the aggregated physician population been investigated. Itis concluded that policy decisions concerning physician distribution should be made on the basis of data on smaller areas than has been done in the past, and on specified categories of physicians rather than on aggregates.