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Method

How the health center figures are made

How the pages of the Health centers hub read what their publishers put out, and what that record can and cannot say. The method every topic shares — where a figure comes from, snapshots, freshness and corrections — is on the site’s methodology page.

What HRSA’s sites file holds

Every site in the Health Center Program’s scope today, from HRSA’s Data Warehouse, each with HRSA’s own key, the health center that runs it, its setting, location type and hours, and its county. HRSA rebuilds the file daily; a site that leaves its scope leaves the file.

Which sites have a page

A site HRSA types “Administrative” offers no direct patient care, in HRSA’s own definition, so it has no page and is not counted among the places a patient can go. A site HRSA gives no address (its state written “XX”) cannot be placed in a state or county, so it has no page either. Both are counted, apart, in the totals.

Sites per 100,000 residents

Patient-care sites, permanent, seasonal and mobile together, over the Census Bureau’s newest population. A school-based site serves a school’s students, so its rate is over all residents only for comparison between states.

How the “What this means” line is made

Under the patient-care sites figure on the hub, one sentence sets it at the scale of a place: the median number of patient-care sites per 100,000 residents among the places the Census Bureau has a population for. The median is taken in the query that returns the national row, from each place’s sites and population, not on the page. With an even number of places the median is the average of the two middle places, and the line says so.

A site is a place, never a person, so no floor applies to it. The line is not a sum of rows and says nothing about any one place, and a place with no Census population is not in it. The label “The Factbook’s calculation” on the line links here, and the query it comes from is named on the line.

What this data cannot show

  • A site in HRSA's file is a site in its scope today, not a promise of open hours: most sites state no schedule, and seasonal and mobile sites are counted apart.
  • 1,293 sites are administrative only, by HRSA's own site type, and see no patients; every count of places a patient can go leaves them out.
  • The file says nothing about quality, patients served or cost, and 76 sites have no address, so they are in no state.

Sources

  • Health Center Service Delivery and Look-Alike Sites — Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Primary Health Care · HRSA's own terms for the file: usage limitations none; HRSA named on every page. · Updated: Daily (refreshed monthly here)

Data retrieved