People in Medically Underserved Areas (%) People living in a
“medically underserved area” reside in an area with reduced
access to primary care physicians.1 For some, access is reduced
due to residence in a remote location, while for others it is
due to the disproportionately low number of primary care
physicians in a non-remote area. One in five Americans have
inadequate or no access to a primary care physician.2 The lack
of accessible health care services is particularly acute for
poor and low-income people, who do not have the financial
resources to travel to find health care and may not be accepted
by physicians due to low reimbursement rates in Medicaid (the
health insurance program for low-income people).3 Although state
data regarding the percentage of women who live in underserved
areas are not available, the state data for men and women
overall are a useful proxy to assess women’s access to primary
care. No benchmark is available for this indicator, so it is
ranked, not graded |State||State Overall D