The goal of this project is to create a new integrated dataset describing physicians and the facilities in which they work. We accomplish this goal by linking multiple data sources of restricted administrative records covering workers, tax filers, and employers available exclusively at the Census Bureau. By linking this data together, the project will provide new insights on the increasingly complex organizational relationships between physicians and their places of work, employment, and service delivery.

This project is the first to identify physicians’ employers from IRS Form W-2 and to then link the identified employers to the Census Bureau’s Business Register , a comprehensive database of businesses and their physical establishments. We enhance data on physicians by linking rich demographic information (including race/ethnicity), medical specialty, geography, income, and employment characteristics. We next enrich data on the facilities affiliated with physicians by linking it to detailed business characteristics such as payroll, employment, ownership, and industry/organizational classifications.

Through this work, we seek to improve our understanding of the rapidly evolving structure of the U.S. healthcare system, including by better describing the facilities through which physicians provide care. The initial version of this integrated dataset will focus on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted physician employment patterns and the organizational structures of those facilities.