PURPOSE Access to care is an important component of cancer center catchment area (CA) analytics, where CAs are defined as the geographic scope of cancer center operations. Spatial access to care is one piece of the access to care continuum that is useful for quantifying population travel to health care providers. As no studies have comprehensively calculated CA spatial access to providers, we examined access to oncology, cancer care, and primary care providers for all 65 National Cancer Institute–designated cancer center CAs in the 48 contiguous US states. METHODS We used the 2024 end-of-year Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services National Downloadable File and the enhanced two-step floating CA method to compute spatial accessibility. We stratified analyses by cancer center, census division, 2020 urban/rural status, 2023 area deprivation, and cancer center type, and produced select CA maps. RESULTS Census tracts in the Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center CA had the highest oncology and cancer care spatial access, while the Masonic Cancer Center had the highest primary care spatial access. New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania CAs had the highest oncology and cancer care spatial access ( P < .001), while midwestern CAs had the highest primary care spatial access ( P < .001). Across area deprivation index quartiles and all provider groupings, urban tracts had higher spatial access than rural tracts ( P < .001). Comprehensive cancer centers had higher spatial access to oncology and primary care than noncomprehensive cancer centers ( P < .001), while noncomprehensive cancer centers had higher spatial access to cancer care providers ( P < .001). CONCLUSION We observed significant differences in CA spatial access to oncology, cancer care, and primary care by region, urban/rural status, socioeconomic position, and cancer center type.
Buchalter et al. (Sun,) studied this question.