Data Methods and Comments

Annually, HPRC obtains databases of licensed health professionals from the state licensing and credentialing boards. The mailing and practice addresses are geocoded, and then the data are cleaned to remove duplicates and incomplete entries.

Active Status

Cases marked as Active include professionals with a "current” license status and a practice address, or mailing address if practice address is not available, in Texas.

Retired, inactive, or working out-of-state cases are marked as Not Active.

The supply numbers reported by HPRC may differ from the total number of current licenses issued by the licensing and credentialing boards.

Contact HPRC for information on active status determination for a particular profession or specialty.

County

Priority is given to the Practice Address over the Mailing Address to determine Active Status. If the Practice Address is not available, the Mailing Address is used.

When licensing files report multiple Practice Addresses (for example, primary, secondary, or tertiary practice sites) only one address is considered in the supply count by county. The order of priority is as follows: Primary Practice Address, Secondary Practice Address, Tertiary Practice Address, and then Mailing Address.

Challenges and limitations. Incomplete or incorrect address information presents challenges to determine the county and state addresses for some cases. Additionally, while professionals may provide services in more than one county, they will only be counted in the county associated with the highest priority address to avoid duplication.

Population Data

HPRC uses Texas population projections data from the Texas Demographic Center to calculate supply ratios. Population projections are frequently updated; therefore, population numbers used for a particular year (ex: data for the year 2014 from the 2014 projections) may not match future population projections for that same year (ex: data for the year 2014 from the 2018 projections). This, in turn, will affect analysis and interpretation of supply ratio trends over time.

Links to external websites are not monitored by HPRC.