There is little overall sales data on this specialty segment of the market.
Furthermore, not all claims-based health care data contains data on the treatment specialty of the providing clinic, as is the case in VHA.
To estimate the size and location of the current nephrology workforce, we used deidentified data from the 2008 American Medical Association (AMA) Physician Professional Data PPD Statistical Researchch file, which contains data on the primary specialty, demographic characteristics, type of practice (private versus academic versus research), and location of physicians in the US [ 16, 17].
It also contains information on half a billion Web pages, a list of America's high schools and data on the offices, specialties and insurance preferences of 1.8 million United States health care professionals.
As our data on the timing of specialty choice show (Tables 2 and 3), the choice of cardiology made by hospital physicians has, in the main, been successfully settled by year five.
For each referral, we also collected data on the type of medical specialty to which the patient was referred.
This study provides new information on the working lives of hospital consultants in Ireland and adds to previously published data on the working lives of specialty trainees at a time when resources are severely depleted.
Established by the AMA in 1906, the Physician Masterfile includes current and historical data for more than 1.4 million physicians, residents, and medical students in the U.S, including data on demographics, specialty, experience, medical school training, and residency.
Contrary to this, our analyses were done on whole HEs because administrative data on the level of medical specialties were not available for the period in question.
The lack of data on the distribution of medical specialties within the various HEs may be considered a limitation of our study.
