Issue Brief: Using Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes (RUCAs) for Expanded APCD Analyses

June 2024 - Data from all-payer claims databases – which typically include healthcare claims from commercial health plans, Medicaid, and Medicare health plans – can provide researchers, policymakers, and the public with crucial insights into how costs, utilization, and access vary across a wide range of factors, including geographies.

However, many standard geographical groupings – like counties or ZIP codes – do not provide enough context for researchers to draw meaningful conclusions about the challenges of a specific community.

Supplemental data sources can help deepen the analysis. For example, Rural Urban Commuting Area codes (RUCAs) offer a set of 10 primary categories developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that offer a standardized way to classify rurality and urbanity. RUCAs, when paired with APCD data, can provide additional insights into how healthcare can be impacted by a person’s relative proximity to urban and rural areas.

In this data brief, Onpoint’s Director of Health Analytics, Amy Kinner, discusses how Onpoint adapted RUCAs to explore the delivery of mental health treatment in Washington State and shares recommendations for other analysts seeking to use RUCAs in their own studies. Read the full issue brief here…