The geographical accessibility of hearing providers to socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in the State of Florida

The objective of this study was to investigate spatial access to hearing health services for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations in Florida through the use of GIS analytical tools. County and census tract shape files and median household income data was downloaded from the U.S. Census Bureau and used to classify Florida counties and census tracts as either high income or low income. Medicaid contracted hearing provider address information was geocoded in ArcGIS to evaluate if there was a difference in the average number of hearing providers in high or low income counties and census tracts. ESRI's Network Analyst function was used to determine the nearest hearing provider from county and census tract centroids representing patient addresses to determine if there was a difference in the average travel time between low and high income counties and census tracts. Differences were observed at both county and census tract levels. County level results suggested possible spatial barriers of access to hearing providers for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations; however, this was not consistent at the census tract level of analysis. As a result, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest socioeconomically disadvantaged populations experience geographic barriers of access to hearing health services in Florida.