Geocoded Medicaid office locations in the United States

Big “p” policy changes at the state and federal level are certainly important to health equity, such as eligibility for and generosity of Medicaid benefits. Medicaid expansion has significantly expanded the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid and the creation of the health insurance exchanges (Marketplace) under the Affordable Care Act created a very visible avenue through which people can learn that they are eligible. Although many applications are now submitted online, physical access to state, county, and tribal government Medicaid offices still plays a critical role in understanding eligibility, getting help in applying, and navigating required documentation for both initial enrollment and redetermination of eligibility. However, as more government functions have moved online, in-person office locations and/or staff may have been cut to reduce costs, and gentrification has shifted where minoritized, marginalized, and/or low-income populations live, it is unclear if this key local connection point between residents and Medicaid has been maintained. Our objective was to identify and geocode all Medicaid offices in the United States for pairing with other spatial data (e.g., demographics, Medicaid participation, health care use, health outcomes) to investigate policy-relevant research questions. Three coders identified Medicaid office addresses in all 50 states and the District of Columbia by searching state government websites (e.g., Department of Health and Human Services or analogous state agency) during late 2021 and early 2022 for the appropriate Medicaid agency and its office locations, which were then reviewed for accuracy by a fourth coder. Our corpus of Medicaid office addresses was then geocoded using the Census Geocoder from the US Census Bureau (https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/) with unresolved addresses investigated and/or manually geocoded using Google Maps. The corpus was updated in August through December 2023 following the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency by a fifth coder as several states closed and/or combined offices during the pandemic. After deduplication (e.g., where multiple counties share a single office) and removal of mailing addresses (e.g., PO Boxes), our dataset includes 3,027 Medicaid office locations. 1 (December 19, 2023) – original version 2 (January 25, 2024) – added related publication (Data in Brief), corrected two records that were missing negative signs in longitude 3 (February 6, 2024