Geographic differences in community oncology provider and practice location characteristics in the central United States

Purpose How care delivery influences urban‐rural disparities in cancer outcomes is unclear. We sought to understand community oncologists’ practice settings to inform cancer care delivery interventions. Methods We conducted secondary analysis of a national dataset of providers billing Medicare from June 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020 in 13 states in the central United States. We used Kruskal‐Wallis rank and Fisher's exact tests to compare physician characteristics and practice settings among rural and urban community oncologists. Findings We identified 1,963 oncologists practicing in 1,492 community locations; 67.5% practiced in exclusively urban locations, 11.3% in exclusively rural locations, and 21.1% in both rural and urban locations. Rural‐only, urban‐only, and urban‐rural spanning oncologists practice in an average of 1.6, 2.4, and 5.1 different locations, respectively. A higher proportion of rural community sites were solo practices (11.7% vs 4.0%, P