Interactive Map Highlights County Health Needs
Posted by Liz Locke of YourPBC.org
Area clinic and hospital resources, capacity issues highlighted
Concerned with areas in Palm Beach County that are at risk for poor health due to lack of access to health care facilities, the Florida Public Health Institute and the Community Health Network, with funding from the Quantum Foundation, has created an interactive mapping tool to clearly identify areas of need. The new interactive map was unveiled at the Community Health Network meeting on Wednesday, October 26.
This web based tool will highlight clinics and healthcare facilities by location and cross reference them with several demographic and other indicators to tell the “visual” story about the county’s health needs and resources.
“This online, interactive map is the first of its kind for the Palm Beach County healthcare community,” said Greta Von Unruh, Executive Director of Economic Development Resource Institute and project consultant. “This is a critical time for health care planning, and thanks to the generous funding made available by the Quantum Foundation this information is available for anyone interested in health care delivery issues to access for free.”
Powered by the nation’s premiere community mapping initiative, PolicyMap, this interactive resource will eventually feature up to fifteen sets of data including information on patients served, locations of clinics on bus routes, population data against known patient information such as age, disease treated and type of insurance used to pay for services. The information can be viewed by municipal and political boundaries, zip codes and census tracks. In addition, the Florida Public Health Institute will now be able to quickly produce data-rich reports and fact-based strategic plans for customized geographic areas in Palm Beach County based on even more layers of information drawn from PolicyMap’s national database.
The map can be accessed on Palm Beach County’s new community data and information web site www.pbccounts.org and on the Florida Public Health Institute’s website: www.flphi.org.
Click Here to read the full article by Liz Locke of YourPBC.org on 11/16/2011.