Students in the MBA in Healthcare Admin program are currently working on capstone projects – I’ve helped a few students already, Louise has had several, and Rita provided some details of a consultation she had in a recent email. Many of these projects involve site selection for different kinds of medical facilities and doctors offices. While the focus of each project differs and will require them to use different sources, there are a few common, core resources that will be useful to all of them:
For neighborhood demographic data:
You can use the US Census Bureau and the NYC Dept of Planning site, which has aggregated much of the census data into convenient profiles. To use these sources, you’ll have to use geography other than ZIP codes, because zip code-level census data is only updated every ten years (thus, the data is from the decennial 2000 census, and is out of date). You can get more recent data if you look at the Census American Community Survey (2006-2008) if you look at special areas called PUMAs (public use microdata areas), which are statistical areas that are similar to neighborhoods within NYC.
The charts and maps on this page will show you the PUMA numbers for each neighborhood (for example, the Upper East Side is PUMA 03805). Once you know the PUMA # for your neighborhood, you can browse the NYC population profiles here to get reports for that area (note – these are NOT the community area profiles, which generally contain just 2000 census data), or you can visit the Census Bureau’s page directly to build detailed tables for your PUMA / neighborhood from the 2006-2008 ACS.
For data on the number of doctors / medical practices in a neighborhood:
Go to the library’s databases page and select ReferenceUSA from the list. Once you’re in, select the US Healthcare database. From there you’ll be able to search by the doctor’s specialty and by ZIP code to generate a list of all doctors in that area who specialize in a particular kind of medicine. You can download a complete list using this database.
For medical information for specific neighborhoods:
Look at the neighborhood profiles created by the NYC Department of Health – they will give you an overview of health-related issues (smoking, obesity, insurance coverage and rates, some vital stats) for each neighborhood (the neighborhoods resemble the PUMA areas that you can download from the census). The site has a lot of additional information so students will want to dig through it thoroughly – one key resource is this map and table of health insurance coverage by neighborhood.
For market research of a particular aspect of the medical industry:
Go to the library’s databases page and select MarketResearch.com.
One other thing I should mention – Louise put together a few LibGuides that focus on healthcare and I’ve created a few that deal with census and NYC data sources.