Massachusetts has the best physician access in the nation, and the rest of the New England states are not far behind, according to physician recruiting firm Merritt Hawkins.
All the New England states were ranked in the top 10 of the 2015 Physician Access Index, with New Hampshire second, Vermont third, Rhode Island eighth, Maine ninth, and Connecticut tenth. Delaware was the highest-ranked non–New England state, finishing fourth, followed by Maryland in fifth, Minnesota in sixth, and Pennsylvania in seventh.
The bottom 10 states were largely clustered in the South and lower Midwest, with Oklahoma getting the not-so-coveted 50th spot, just after Nevada at 49 and New Mexico at 48.
The Physician Access Index uses 33 variables – including physicians per capita, percent of population with health insurance, urgent care centers and retail clinics per capita, and percent of physicians close to retirement. One point goes to the best-performing state and 50 to the lowest performer for each variable, so low score wins. Massachusetts had a score of 442, with Oklahoma coming in at 1,096, Merritt Hawkins said.
The report, however, also noted variability within each state. “No state is without its challenges and strong points where physician access is concerned,” Mark Smith, president of Merritt Hawkins, said in a statement. “There are pockets of patients with poor physician access in highly ranked states and pockets of patients with good physician access in states with low rankings.”