Improving Health Care Network Adequacy Through Spatial Analysis Utilizing GIS Technology

Network adequacy is a set of regulations a provider’s office must follow. Requirements are dependent on what funding they are receiving from the government, insurance companies, and other paying entities. Network adequacy at a provider’s office should be able to prove that they are providing their patients reasonable access to care. Generating these reports is currently a timely and costly process. Using GIS can improve the efficiency of generating and turning in their network adequacy reports to the required entities which would help save time and money. Having a way for providers offices to spend less time on these reports would allow for them to have more time to give to patients. Utilizing GIS to see the providers accessibility to patients can also show health care facilities where there are underserved areas, which would allow them to build new locations and add new providers. This paper shows the benefit of integrating GIS into the health field and how both provider facilities and patients can gain from this integration. Using the two-step floating catchment area method combined with ArcGIS Pro proved to be beneficial to calculating network adequacy and can be seen in the results of this paper.