More Than Two-Thirds of U.S. Counties Do Not Have a Gastroenterologist

FRIDAY, Feb. 21, 2025 (HealthDay News) — About 69 percent of U.S. counties do not have a gastroenterologist, according to a research letter published online Feb. 6 in Gastroenterology.

Xiaohan Ying, M.D., from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and colleagues examined geographic disparities in access to gastroenterologists in the United States in a cross-sectional study using physician workforce data from 2020 to 2021 and county demographic data from the 2020 U.S. Census.

The researchers found that 69.3 percent of the 3,149 U.S. counties analyzed, corresponding to 49.4 million individuals, did not have any gastroenterologists; 16.8 and 5.6 percent had ≤5 and 20 gastroenterologists, respectively. Thirty-nine percent of the 1,167 metropolitan counties had no gastroenterologists compared with 87.4 percent of 1,975 nonmetropolitan counties. Compared with counties with gastroenterologists, those without gastroenterologists were more likely to be nonmetropolitan (79.1 versus 25.8 percent), have older populations (median age, 43 versus 40 years), have a lower rate of non-White (23.4 versus 32.3 percent) and foreign-born individuals (2.0 versus 5.4 percent), have lower median household income ($53,826 versus $62,739), and have fewer uninsured individuals (10.2 versus 12.2 percent). Overall, 45 percent of the population lived within 10 miles of the nearest gastroenterologist, and 14 and 2 percent lived more than 25 and more than 50 miles away, respectively.

“Although there is adequate access to gastroenterologists on a national level generally, with >80 percent of the population in the United States living within 25 miles of the nearest gastroenterologist, further efforts are needed to expand access to gastroenterologists and improve equity,” the authors write.

Two authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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