page_title: Medical deserts in the United States
section_title: Urban health care deserts
hierarchical_section_title: Medical deserts in the United States / Urban health care deserts
context_page_description: The United States has many regions which have been described as medical deserts, regions with inadequate access to one or more kinds of medical services. An estimated 30 million Americans, many in rural regions of the country, live at least 60 minutes drive from a hospital with trauma care services. Limited access to emergency room services, as well as medical specialists, leads to increases in mortality rates and long-term health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes. Regions with higher rates of Medicaid and Medicare patients, as well patients who are uninsured are less likely to live within an hour's drive of a hospital emergency room.
  Since 1975, over 1,000 hospitals, many in rural regions, have closed their doors, unable to bear the cost of care of uninsured patients, resulting in some patients in every state needing to drive at least an hour to a hospital emergency room, a problem that poses an even greater danger during the COVID-19 pandemic, when patients in respiratory distress urgently need oxygen and can ill afford an hour-long ambulance ride to reach a hospital.
context_section_description: According to research conducted in 2019 by University of Chicago Medicine, African American census tracts in large US cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City—are more likely than white majority neighborhoods to be located in trauma care deserts that are greater than five miles from a trauma center offering emergency medical services and specialists: neurosurgeons, cardiac doctors, respiratory therapists.
  A team of researchers found that in Los Angeles 89 percent of Black-majority census tracts were situated in trauma deserts; in Chicago, 73 percent; in New York City 14 percent. In Los Angeles County, South Los Angeles with one-million residents and the highest mortality rate in the county, also has the highest rates of disease and premature deaths from preventable conditions: "coronary heart disease, homicide, diabetes, lung cancer, and motor vehicle crashes." In economically stressed South LA, there are 11 pediatricians for every 100,000 children, whereas in upscale West Los Angeles there are almost 200 pediatricians for every100,000 children. In West LA, 12 percent of adults are uninsured compared to 30 percent in South LA.
  Even as health care delivery models shift from hospitals to community clinics offering Urgent Care in once-vacant retail spaces, poor neighborhoods face inequities with the distribution of community clinics in predominantly wealthier suburban neighborhoods.
caption: South Los Angeles
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