Hospitals with ERs within 1-mile of Long-term Care Facilities in NJ
Description
This dataset illustrates the number of hospitals across the state of New Jersey. Within this information, data on the types of centers (e.g. emergency room, trauma center level 1, etc.) was provided. Having this information adds onto important of general hospital information created by the NJOGIS (2020). By combining NJOGIS hospital and long-term care data with NJ Department of Health Reports, it is possible to begin exploring the medical impact of accessibility to an ER by location. The initial data sets were gathered from two main sources, and then combined. New Jersey Office of Geographic Information Systems from aggregated the number and names of all the hospitals in NJ.. NJ Department of Health Reports on Health Facilities identified hospitals across NJ with an ER. The data were then geocoded using ArcGIS Online software for visualization. In comparison to the 244 total hospital in the state of NJ, there are 70 hospitals in NJ have emergency rooms. This means that about 28.6% of the hospitals in the state have an ER. NJOGIS also keeps data on the long-term care facilities located statewide which identifies 730. Among those long-term care facilities, 69 hospitals are found within 1 mile of these long-term care facilities. This means that about 90.55% of long-term care facilities are not within a mile radius of an ER. Geographic data sets that work to join together differing records on hospitals with emergency rooms and long-term care facilities can improve our understanding of the accessibility these facilities have to them, as well as the human and medical costs that are not well distributed. Before creating this dataset, there was no information on hospitals with emergency rooms in the state of NJ and the long-term care facilities throughout the state that were located close to one. With this information, there can be a policy implemented to have all long-term care facilities close to a hospital with an ER to ensure that the population is provided with all necessary resources for any sudden medical emergency.