Is Austin Underserved in Health Care?

There are various ways to interpret "underserved," but one way to tackle this issue is to look at the labor market. According to our calculations using data from EMSI, there are approximately 56,000 health care practitioner and support jobs in the CAPCOG region, compared to 895,000 in Texas and 12.2 million in the US. Adjusting for population, that's 314 jobs per 10,000 people in the CAPCOG region, compared to 365 in Texas and 399 in the US.

So the answer is: maybe. There are many reasons why the ratio of jobs to people may be different in Austin compared to other regions: differences in technology and associated labor needs, hospital staffing patterns, community health, presence of a medical school, etc. But the gap between 314 here and 399 at the national level is substantial.

Here are the top ten occupations that appear to be most underrepresented in the CAPCOG region compared to the US average. Number next to the occupation name is jobs per 10,000 people in the CAPCOG region and number in parentheses is the US value.

Registered nurses 54.41 (85.03)
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants 32.91 (49.99)
Home health aides 22.71 (33.06)
Licensed practical and vocational nurses 17.19 (24.30)
Physicians and surgeons 24.49 (28.98)
Health care support workers, all other 4.35 (6.52)
Medical and clinical lab technicians 3.04 (5.05)
Radiological technologists and technicians 5.07 (6.89)
Health care practitioners and technical workers, all other 0.43 (1.94)
Medical transcriptionists 1.79 (3.17)

Another interesting fact: we must love our pets in Austin. There are only four occupations where the jobs per 10,000 people ratio locally exceeds the US average by more than one job, and three of them are found in veterinarian offices.

Brian Kelsey