Geographic analysis of urologist density and prostate cancer mortality in the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Context

Financial and demographic pressures in US require an understanding of the most efficient distribution of physicians to maximize population-level health benefits. Prior work has assumed a constant negative relationship between physician supply and mortality outcomes throughout the US and has not addressed regional variation.

Methods

In this ecological analysis, geographically weighted regression was used to identify spatially varying relationships between local urologist density and prostate cancer mortality at the county level. Data from 1,492 counties in 30 eastern and southern states from 2006-2010 were analyzed.

Findings

The ordinary least squares (OLS) regression found that, on average, increasing urologist density by 1 urologist per 100,000 people resulte

SUBMITTER: Yao N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4482500 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature