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Federally Qualified Health Centers

This indicator reports the number of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in the community. This indicator is relevant because FQHCs are community assets that provide health care to vulnerable populations; they receive extra funding from the federal government to promote access to ambulatory care in areas designated as medically underserved.

Source

Source Description

Providers of Service (POS) data is compiled quarterly by Research and Planning Consultants, LP (RPC) for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The Provider of Services (POS) Extract is created from the QIES (Quality Improvement Evaluation System) database. These data include provider number, name, and address and characterize the participating institutional providers. The data are collected through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Regional Offices. The file contains an individual record for each Medicare-approved provider and is updated quarterly.

Methodology

Population figures are acquired for this indicator from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Decennial Census, Summary File 1. Addresses for all active federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) were acquired from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Providers of Service (POS) data file from December 2023. FQHC addresses were geocoded using the ESRI ArcGIS Online API to obtain the coordinates (point-location) of each facility. The resulting point location file was intersected with standard geographic areas (tracts, counties, and states) to generate a count of the total FQHCs in each area.

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