Using Trilliant Health’s Provider Needs Assessment Data Feed To Analyze Physician Supply and Market Demand
Table of Contents:
The supply of physicians is increasingly inadequate to meet the demand for healthcare services across rural, suburban and urban communities. Burnout, an aging workforce and pandemic-driven attrition are only widening this gap. To compete effectively, health systems must design provider networks to address market needs.
However, many health systems rely on data that is merely sufficient to comply with law but inadequate to inform strategic decision making.
Decisions based upon national physician-to-population ratios, outdated provider listings and inaccurate provider-practice affiliations are guaranteed to be suboptimal at the market level. Without market-specific data that accounts for real-time provider specialties and practice patterns, provider needs assessments miss the mark – leading to missed opportunities and strategic blind spots.
By benchmarking provider supply with service demand at the local level, provider organizations can:
By following this guide, you will be able to answer the following critical questions with confidence:
This guide will enable you to answer each of these questions using Trilliant Health’s Provider Needs Assessment data feed.
The following steps will enable you to measure and analyze your market share:
Each of these steps is designed to give you the insights necessary to make informed strategic decisions. Let’s break down each step in detail.
To assess provider supply accurately, the first step is to identify which providers are actively delivering care in your market. This goes beyond pulling from NPPES or outdated physician rosters – which often include inactive providers, duplicates or incorrect practice locations.
Our up-to-date, comprehensive provider directory enables you to pinpoint which providers are actively practicing at which locations within your own market definitions. This level of precision is essential for geographically accurate supply calculations and sets the foundation for the rest of your needs assessment.
In the Data:
In this example, we will focus on Austin, TX and the surrounding areas and gastroenterology.
🔑 Key Insight: Traditional provider needs assessments often produce unreliable results because they are not grounded in an up-to-date provider directory. Without insight into which physicians are actively practicing in each market – and in what capacity – it is impossible to assess whether a market is experiencing a surplus or a deficit of supply. This fundamental analysis flaw leads to misinformed strategies, overlooked opportunities and misaligned recruitment efforts.
Once you identify the providers who are actively practicing in your market, the next step is to quantify their presence using FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) calculations. This is more than just a headcount – it is a more realistic and nuanced measure of supply that accounts for where and how often providers actually deliver care.
For example, a gastroenterologist who splits their time across multiple locations or is approaching retirement will contribute less than 1.0 FTE to any one site. This step translates provider rosters into an accurate, actionable measure of market-level supply.
In the Data:
🔑 Key Insight: 72% of the providers practice at multiple locations, yet many analytics vendors rely on a single practice address from National Plan & Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) data. This leads to inflated or inaccurate provider counts, especially in multi-site organizations using one Type 2 National Provider Identifier (NPI) record across several physical locations. Without an accurate understanding of practice locations, any analysis risks misrepresenting provider availability.
With an accurate understanding of provider supply, the next step is to calculate FTE demand – the number of providers needed to meet the demand for healthcare services in a market. This step helps determine whether a market is over- or underserved.
Unlike supply, demand is not uniform. Rural, suburban and urban communities have different access barriers, care-seeking behaviors and population densities – all of which influence provider need.
Trilliant Health’s tiered approach to FTE demand accounts for these differences by calibrating expectations based on local market realities. This ensures your needs assessment doesn’t apply one-size-fits-all benchmarks to very different markets – leading to a more accurate and equitable view of need.
In the Data:
🤔 Analysis Question: Does your current approach to conducting provider needs assessments account for demand variation across market types? The need for gastroenterology services varies between markets based on population characteristics and disease incidence. Yet many analyses apply a single benchmark across all geographies – oversimplifying and misrepresenting true demand. To address this, we developed specialty-specific provider-to-population ratios across five distinct market segments, ensuring that demand estimates reflect real-world differences in utilization and access.
Now that you’ve calculated both FTE supply and FTE demand, the next step is to compare them. This side-by-side analysis reveals whether your market is over- or underserved by specialty – and, if so, where.
This comparison allows you to surface critical service gaps or identify overserved areas that may affect access, growth and network performance.
In the Data:
🔑 Key Insight: Geographic granularity in your analysis can impact your perception of market coverage. When one of our clients conducted a provider needs assessment, their overall market appeared overserved for orthopedic surgery at the county level, but at the ZIP code-level, there were areas of localized deficit. This insight allowed them to target recruitment and expansion efforts to the specific areas where patients lacked access – supporting compliant and data-driven network planning.
With a detailed understanding of where your market is over- or underserved, the final step is turning those insights into targeted, strategic decisions that drive meaningful change. The goal is not just to identify gaps but to act on these insights to improve access, optimize resources and support sustainable growth. Consider the following strategic actions:
A Provider Needs Assessment is more than a one-time analysis – it is a strategic tool for aligning your network with real-time market realities and long-term population needs. A dynamic and data-driven approach to conducting provider needs assessments supports smarter, more sustainable growth.