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The Health Resources and Services Administration
Shortage Designation Branch develops shortage designation
criteria and uses them to decide whether or not a
geographic area, population group or facility is a
Health Professional Shortage Area or a Medically Underserved
Area or Population.
| Health Professional Shortage Areas |
HPSAs may be designated as having a shortage of primary
medical care, dental or mental health providers. They
may be urban or rural areas, population groups or
medical or other public facilities.
As of September 30, 2009, there are:
- 6,204 Primary Care HPSAs with 65 million people living in them. It would take 16,643 practitioners to meet their need for primary care providers (a population to practitioner ratio of 2,000:1.
- 4,230 Dental HPSAs with 49 million people living in them. It would take 9,642 practitioners to meet their need for dental providers (a population to practitioner ratio of 3,000:1).
- 3,291 Mental Health HPSAs with 80 million people living in them. It would take 5,338 practitioners to meet their need for mental health providers (a population to practitioner ratio of 10,000:1).
| Medically Underserved Areas/Populations
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Medically Underserved Areas (MUA) may be
a whole county or a group of contiguous counties,
a group of county or civil divisions or a group of
urban census tracts in which residents have a shortage
of personal health services.
Medically Underserved Populations (MUPs)
may include groups of persons who face economic, cultural
or linguistic barriers to health care.
Instead of issuing a final regulation as the next
step, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
will issue a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for
further review and public comment prior to issuing
a final rule. For more information, see Proposed
Rule: Designation of Medically Underserved Populations
and Health Professional Shortage Areas.
Page last updated: April 20, 2009
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