The interactive map and table below display data for Alabama hospitals, aggregated by primary care service area (PCSA). There are 78 PCSAs. Each PCSA is based on a centroid: a single general admission hospital in most cases, or a cluster of such hospitals in a few large urban areas, or the center of a small town without a hospital in a few rural cases. The PCSA corresponding to the centroid consists of the region of the state that is closer to that centroid than any other, as measured by drive time through the road network. The centroids are distributed throughout the state so that the PCSAs generally correspond to drive times of 30 minutes or less to the centroids. Like the counties, the PCSAs partition the state. The NCHS field refers to the NCHS rural-urban classification discussed in the Introduction. The Ratio field is the number of hospitals beds per 1000 population in a PCSA. As noted in the Introduction, demographic data such as population and households are close approximations. This is because, unlike counties, a census tract may overlap two (or more) PCSAs. In such a case, a demographic variable for the tract is split between the PCSAs proportionally according to area.

Map

In the map below, the base layer consists of the PCSAs. PCSAs in shades of blue are urban and PCSAs in shades of orange are rural. The Birmingham PCSA in dark blue, is Alabama's only large central metro PCSA. The PCSAs in blue are large fringe metro PCSAs; the PCSAs in the lighter blue are medium metro PCSAs; the PCSAs in the lightest blue are small metro PCSAs. The PCSAs in light orange are micropolitan PCSAs; and the PCSAs in the darker orange are noncore PCSAs. The hospitals are shown as a point layer: the red dots are acute care hospitals, yellow dots are critical access hospitals, and the purple dots are rural emergency hosptials. Click on an object to see summary information for that object.

Tables

The tables below display data on Alabama hospitals aggregated by PCSA. Click on rows in the table to see the corresponding areas highlighted in the map above.

PCSA Table

NCHS Table

The table below displays data on Alabama hospitals aggregated by the NCHS rural-urban classification.