Intraurban physician location. New empirical evidence.

This article addresses an issue of continuing interest to social scientists: the spatial distribution of physician services. Although there have been many studies of physician distribution across urban areas and states, there have been few studies, none recent, of physician distribution within urban areas. The paper begins with a review of studies that examine the determinants of intraurban physician location. Following the review the paper offers new estimates of the determinants of intraurban physician location using a maximum-likelihood procedure based on the Poisson distribution. Contrary to previous studies, the results imply that market forces do play a significant role in the spatial distribution of physicians.