Useful Interactive Maps

If you are looking for teaching tools or just trying to find up-to-date information on health statistics and trends  these interactive maps provide a wealth of data. They are all online and free.

The Dartmouth Institute for Health Care Policy and Clinical Practice has produced an excellent map using Medicare data.  The Dartmouth Atlas allows users to create reports based on hospital referral regions (HHRs), hospital service regions (HSAs), primary care areas (PCAs), states, zipcodes, and even individual institutions. This is the go-to resource if you need information on utilization rates, medical discharges, or any of two dozen other topics and indicators.  In addition to seeing it mapped, the site also allows you to bring up your data in the form of a table, bar graph, linear graph or age and sex distribution.  One of the most useful features is that once you have found the data you need, you can download it to PowerPoint, or Excel, or you can create a PDF.

The Commonwealth Fund has created the Health System Data Center. It features a US map that measures a broad set of health indicators.  It ranks regions by three different "scorecards," showing either the state system, child health care or local area  rankings.  Each scorecard can be broken down into a number of factors such as childhood obesity rates or the percent of children who received needed mental health care in the last year. This tool is useful for comparing health performance between one region and another. States can also be ranked individually. One limitation, with this map however, is that information is not available past 2009.  This site also makes it easy to send your results to a PowerPoint slide or a PDF.

If you want to find out where quality improvement research is taking place, you will be interested in this map. Professor Ross Baker of the University of Toronto and Naomi Fulup of University College London led the team that researched and created it for The Health Foundation  in the UK.  Click on an icon at any  point on this global scale map and you will be taken to that instistitution's website. The "scan" of health improvement science organizations found mostly academic centers and healthcare institutions gives a general snapshot of where improvement research is being conducted.