Patient Demand for Ophthalmologists in the United States: A Google Trends Analysis

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To study geographic patterns in ophthalmologist supply and patient demand for services in the United States.

Methods

Google Trends data for the keywords “ophthalmology” and “ophthalmologist” between 2004 and 2019 were queried and normalized to determine relative search volumes (RSV) for each United States state. Ophthalmologist density was calculated by dividing the number of practicing ophthalmologists by the State Census Bureau population estimates. RSV values were divided by ophthalmologist density and normalized to calculate the relative demand index (RDI) for each state. The number of accredited ophthalmology programs per state was acquired through the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Results

Ophthalmologist concentration was highly heterogeneous across the country. The states with the highest concentration of ophthalmologist per 10,000 people were Washington, DC (1.42), Maryland (0.94), Massachusetts (0.87), and New York (0.86), while the lowest were Wyoming (0.19), Idaho (0.36), New Mexico (0.38), and Nevada (0.39). RSVs ranged from 36 (Alaska and North Dakota) to 100 (Michigan). The highest RDI was found in South Dakota (100), Delaware (84), Michigan (66), and Arizona (56). The lowest RDI was in Washington, DC (0), Hawaii (7), Oregon (8), and Montana (14). The highest number of ophthalmology residency programs were in New York (18), Texas (9), and California (9), whereas 12 states lacked residency programs altogether.

Conclusions

In this study, we found a wide range in the geographic distribution of ophthalmologists and residency programs in the United States. States with the highest relative demand index may represent areas most at risk of unmet medical needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Ophthalmologists
• Google Trends
• Workforce
• Georgraphic trends

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Meeting presentation

Estimating Patient Demand for Ophthalmologists in the United States using Google Trends, ARVO Annual Meeting Abstract, June 2021. This submission has not been published anywhere previously and is not simultaneously being considered for any other publication

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09286586.2023.2273508.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.