Accessibility of adult immunizations in pharmacies compared to physician offices in low-income communities

Expanding access to immunization services is essential for improving low-income communities' access to health care.

The purpose of this analysis was to assess whether adults who live in low-income communities, and adults 65 years old and older who live in low-income communities, have greater access to pharmacies for immunization services than to relevant physician offices.

Databases of the number of physician practices and pharmacy locations were geocoded into ZIP Code tabulation areas (ZCTAs). The ZCTAs where the share of families living at or below the federal poverty threshold exceeded 30% were defined as low-income communities for purposes of the analysis. The raw access comparisons were adjusted to reflect whether physician practices have Medicare Part D billing capability, an access constraint for patients aged 65 years and over, and to reflect the differences in hours of operation.

There were 15.1% more pharmacy locations within the low-income communities than the availability of physician practices. After adjusting for the hours of operation, the pharmacy locations offered 95.7% more operating hours than the physician practice sites. Compared to the physician practices that have Medicare Part D billing capability, there were 203.0% more pharmacy locations.

Based on the results, lower-income families had greater access to pharmacies than to physician practices, which indicates that pharmacies can play a valuable role in expanding immunization access and could warrant considering policy reforms that enhance the authority of pharmacists to administer vaccinations. State-level potential reforms could include expanding and harmonizing laws governing pharmacist authority to deliver such services, creating health enterprise zones, and granting special tax breaks, regulatory exemptions, or public assistance to encourage the establishment of physician offices and pharmacies in low-income communities.