Abstract
Rapid diagnostic testing for COVID-19 is key to guiding social distancing orders and containing emerging disease clusters by contact tracing and isolation. However, communities throughout the US do not yet have adequate access to tests. Pharmacies are already engaged in testing, but there is capacity to greatly increase coverage. Using a facility location optimization model and willingness-to-travel estimates from US National Household Travel Survey data, we find that if COVID-19 testing became available in all US pharmacies, an estimated 94% of the US population would be willing to travel to obtain a test, if warranted. Whereas the largest chain provides high coverage in densely populated states, like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut, independent pharmacies would be required for sufficient coverage in Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. If only 1,000 ZIP code areas for pharmacies in the US are selected to provide testing, judicious selection, using our optimization model, provides estimated access to 29 million more people than selecting pharmacies simply based on population density.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 330-338 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Health Care Management Science |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2021 |
Funding
National Institutes of Health grants NIH R01 AI151176 and NIH U01 GM087791, U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant 2017-ST-061-QA0001 and Tito’s Handmade Vodka. The authors thank Dr. Gordon Wells for acquiring and sharing the pharmacy data set used in this study, and for providing additional pharmacy data sets that we considered. The authors are also grateful to John Sheffield and Mauricio Tec, who helped gather and share pharmacy data sets. We acknowledge financial support from the National Institutes of Health under Grant NIH R01 AI151176 and Grant NIH U01 GM087791, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Grant 2017-ST-061-QA0001 and Tito’s Handmade Vodka. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The authors thank Dr. Gordon Wells for acquiring and sharing the pharmacy data set used in this study, and for providing additional pharmacy data sets that we considered. The authors are also grateful to John Sheffield and Mauricio Tec, who helped gather and share pharmacy data sets. We acknowledge financial support from the National Institutes of Health under Grant NIH R01 AI151176 and Grant NIH U01 GM087791, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Grant 2017-ST-061-QA0001 and Tito?s Handmade Vodka. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Keywords
- COVID-19
- Facility location optimization
- Pharmacies
- Points of dispensing
- Test access
- Test site selection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine (miscellaneous)
- General Health Professions