PlainHealthAccess publishes a healthcare-shortage profile for every U.S. county and state, built entirely from official Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) data — the Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) and Medically Underserved Area (MUA) designation files. This page explains how those pages are produced, what standards they are held to, and how to report a number that looks wrong so we can fix it at the source.

How these pages are produced

Every HPSA score, designation count, population-in-shortage figure, and MUA status on PlainHealthAccess originates in an official HRSA dataset. We download the raw designation files from the HRSA Data Warehouse, load them through a documented, version-controlled data pipeline, and render them into county, state, ranking, and guide pages using shared templates. No county page is hand-written, and no score, designation count, or population figure is typed in by an editor. Each figure you see is read directly from the official HRSA source record at build time.

Our editorial operation is responsible for the parts a pipeline cannot decide on its own: which HRSA datasets to use, how each measure (HPSA score, designation type, MUA index) is defined and labeled, what the methodology says, how derived measures (such as a state's total population in shortage or a county-versus-national comparison) are computed, which guides and explainers we write, and what we will not publish. The pipeline then applies those decisions uniformly across every county and state, so the rule that governs one page governs all of them.

Sourcing standards

We publish only data that comes from official HRSA sources, and we name the source on every page. Our data is:

• HRSA HPSA designations: the federal Health Professional Shortage Area files for primary care, mental health, and dental care — each carrying a severity score (0–25, or 0–26 for dental), designation type (geographic, population, or facility), and status — published through the HRSA Data Warehouse. They are the source for every shortage designation and score on the site.
• HRSA Medically Underserved Areas / Populations (MUA/P): the federal designations identifying areas and populations with a shortage of personal health services, scored with the Index of Medical Underservice (IMU).

We do not scrape third-party sources, we do not assign our own shortage designations on top of the federal data, and we do not editorialize the underlying figures. Where a figure is derived from the official data (for example, a state rollup or a county-versus-national comparison), the page links to our methodology, which sets out exactly how it is calculated.

Accuracy and validation

Because the numbers are read straight from HRSA files, the most common limitation is the underlying designation data itself rather than a transcription error. HPSA scores depend on the provider and population data HRSA had at designation; a county can carry multiple overlapping designations covering different service areas; and a designation reflects a federal eligibility determination, not a live count of available providers. Our pipeline applies systematic checks before a value is published: it counts only the designations HRSA actually assigned, shows a value as unavailable when the source omits it, derives population-in-shortage from de-duplicated county residents rather than summing overlapping HPSA service-area populations, and reconciles county, state, and national rollups so the same figure is consistent wherever it appears.

When we find that a displayed number is wrong, we fix the cause, not the symptom. We trace the value back to the data layer, correct the derivation or labeling rule there, and regenerate the affected pages, so the same class of error is resolved everywhere at once rather than patched on a single page.

Editorial independence

PlainHealthAccess does not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from any provider, hospital, clinic, or organization in exchange for how an area is presented. We do not assign our own shortage scores or endorsements. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense. Advertisers have no influence over which areas we cover, how a designation or score is reported, or how any page ranks.

Update schedule

HRSA reviews and updates HPSA and MUA designations on a rolling basis and publishes updated files through the Data Warehouse, typically on a quarterly cadence. We refresh our database from the latest official exports and re-stamp the affected pages so the published date reflects when the data genuinely changed. Because HRSA processes individual designation changes continuously rather than in annual batches, there may be a lag of up to about three months between an official change and its reflection here.

Corrections process

If a figure looks wrong, please tell us. We treat data-error reports as a priority and follow the same process every time:

1. Report. Email hello@plainhealthaccess.com with the page URL and the figure you are questioning.
2. Verify. We check the value against the official HRSA source record for that county, state, or designation.
3. Fix at the source. If the figure is wrong on our side, we correct the underlying data or derivation rule and regenerate every page it affects.
4. Note it. If the figure is correct but reflects a known limitation — a pending designation review, a population-group HPSA not captured in a county rollup, or a stale federal export — we explain the caveat rather than silently changing it.

Some apparent errors trace back to the HRSA record itself. When that is the case, we will tell you so and point you to the official HRSA HPSA Finder so you can verify it directly.

Contact

Questions about our standards, methodology, or a specific figure are welcome at hello@plainhealthaccess.com. For more on what the data covers and how it is processed, see our About page and methodology. For how to use this information responsibly, see our disclaimer.