Harnessing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to Enable Community-Oriented Primary Care

in the public health arena, its utility for clinical population management and coordination by leaders in a primary care clinical health setting has been neither fully realized nor evaluated. Methods: In a primary care network of clinics charged with caring for vulnerable urban communi-ties, we used GIS to (1) integrate and analyze clinical (practice management) data and population (cen-sus) data and (2) generate distribution, service area, and population penetration maps of those clinics. We then conducted qualitative evaluation of the responses of primary care clinic leaders, administra-tors, and community board members to analytic mapping of their clinic and regional population data. Results: Practice management data were extracted, geocoded, and mapped to reveal variation be-tween actual clinical service areas and the medically underserved areas for which these clinics received funding, which was surprising to center leaders. In addition, population penetration analyses were per-formed to depict patterns of utilization. Qualitative assessments of staff response to the process of map-ping clinical and population data revealed enthusiastic engagement in the process, which led to en-hanced community comprehension, new ideas about data use, and an array of applications to improve their clinical revenue. However, they also revealed barriers to further adoption, including time, ex-pense, and technical expertise, which could limit the use of GIS and mapping unless economies of scal