Annals of emergency medicine
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The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has underscored the need to understand health care in a regional context. However, there are multiple definitions of health care regions available for conducting geospatial analyses. In this study, we compare the novel Pittsburgh Atlas, which defined regions for emergency care, with the existing definitions of regions, counties, and the Dartmouth Atlas, with respect to nonemergent acute medical conditions using pneumonia admissions. ⋯ Because the Pittsburgh Atlas also has the benefit of respecting state and county boundaries, the use of this definition may have improved policy applicability without sacrificing accuracy in defining health care regions for acute medical conditions.