Healthcare deserts are rampant across the U.S. Over 80% of U.S. counties lack proper access to essential healthcare services, and according to a GoodRX study, more than a third of the population — 121 million Americans — struggle to access primary care providers, hospitals, health centers, or pharmacies.
The impact is even more devastating in low-income and rural areas, where healthcare deserts collide with unstable housing, limited access to nutritious food, and unreliable transportation. These challenges don’t just coexist — they compound, creating a vicious cycle. Communities with the fewest resources bear the highest burden of chronic illnesses while facing insurmountable barriers to care.
Recognizing this, federal and state initiatives are emerging to tackle these issues. Programs like the CMS Innovation Center and California’s Department of Health Care Access Interoperability Project foster seamless sharing of patient data among health systems, promoting stronger care coordination and driving better health outcomes. Detroit recently implemented a “Rides to Care” program, offering free transportation to doctor visits for all new and expectant Detroit mothers and infants through the first year of life.
Addressing the roadblocks
These are important initiatives. However, too many stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem are tethered to structures that facilitate inefficiency and inequity. To disrupt the cycle, the entire ecosystem must shift from its reactionary, siloed model to one that’s proactive, sustainable, and integrated.
Two significant roadblocks need to be addressed.
First, as widely acknowledged — and evidenced by government initiatives — healthcare must extend beyond medical treatment and consider the broader social determinants of health (SDOH) that impact patients’ lives — such as access to housing, healthy food, and transportation. The correlation is clear — if basic needs are unmet, achieving or maintaining health becomes impossible.
Second, an integrated, interoperable, data-driven approach across the ecosystem is necessary to bridge the gaps in care and ensure a healthcare system that addresses SDOH and helps mitigate the consequences of healthcare deserts. The current healthcare infrastructure is riddled with inefficiencies and data silos, which prevent any real change from happening. By removing these barriers, we can pinpoint where inefficiencies exist, direct resources where they are most needed, and move toward a system that promotes health and delivers equitable care.
New Mexico: a stark illustration
New Mexico highlights an example of the consequences of healthcare deserts.
In rural New Mexico, approximately one-third of the state’s counties are classified as “OB deserts,” lacking sufficient obstetric care providers to serve the population. The March of Dimes reports that about 18% of New Mexicans do not have a birthing hospital within a 30-minute drive; the closures of maternity units in rural areas like Gallup, Artesia, and Las Vegas exacerbated this crisis. In some parts of the state, women travel over 90 miles to reach the nearest hospital that offers birthing services.
Lack of access also affects prenatal care. A pregnant woman living in a remote New Mexico county without consistent transportation is less likely to attend prenatal visits, increasing her risk of complications.
Data confirms what common sense suggests — that women in areas with high travel times to healthcare facilities — especially in rural and economically disadvantaged regions — are at a greater risk of maternal mortality and severe health complications following pregnancy.
However, if we had an integrated healthcare system that uses data to identify where and why healthcare deserts exist, we could map out initiatives to economically manage the risks. With real-time data on SDOH factors like transportation availability, income levels, and housing stability, we could better understand the full scope of patients’ needs and create targeted interventions that bridge the gaps in care.
For example, the current non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) landscape is fragmented and inefficient, with a proliferation of small transportation companies lacking the capacity to serve vast, rural areas. It is economically unsustainable and completely inefficient to have thousands of transport companies with a handful of drivers covering sprawling rural areas. Yet this is the current system that thousands of pregnant women rely on to get to their prenatal appointments.
It’s time for a different approach. Independent drivers’ associations — similar to independent physician associations — can operate as part of a consolidated, statewide network, allowing healthcare systems to more efficiently allocate transportation resources to areas in need, avoiding the reactive, patchwork system currently in place. This data-driven model would identify the communities most in need of these services and support the development of new infrastructure, such as transportation hubs in rural areas.
A coordinated transportation network in New Mexico could help expectant mothers in OB deserts access prenatal care more reliably and cost-effectively.
Transformative impact of data and interoperability
Access to actionable data is key. Data – including SDOH data – is widely collected throughout healthcare. Still, there are significant challenges to using it effectively due to the lack of standardization, silos preventing data sharing, insufficient training on data collection, and limited integration into medical records. According to a survey by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), while 80% of healthcare organizations collect SDOH data, many struggle to integrate it into their workflows. The data isn’t systematically organized or aggregated, so capturing the insights is problematic.
Interoperability is essential to enable the sharing of patient data across health systems and services.
Large-scale interoperability, facilitated by recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, could enable healthcare providers to analyze SDOH data in real time. This would allow public health experts to understand where intervention is most needed and provide resources accordingly. For instance, in rural New Mexico, a data-driven system could reveal where there’s a shortage of providers and transportation options, enabling targeted investments that expand maternity care access and address transportation gaps.
Enabling interoperability unlocks data-sharing to help identify opportunities to reduce fraud, waste, and inefficiency while allowing taxpayer dollars to go further. This shift would also empower healthcare providers to address issues before they escalate, resulting in fewer hospital visits, lower healthcare costs, and better health outcomes.
To break the cycle of healthcare deserts, we must pair government efforts with widespread advocacy and action. Advances in AI enable us to harness data to identify gaps and direct resources where they are most needed. By leveraging these tools and driving a collective push for equitable solutions, we can transform our healthcare system into one that is inclusive, holistic, and capable of ensuring every person — regardless of geography or income — has access to the care they deserve.

Sufian Chowdhury
Sufian Chowdhury is a serial entrepreneur whose passion lies in improving the healthcare industry through innovative technology. Through his experience in healthcare consulting and entrepreneurship, Sufian has held multiple leadership positions in both the healthcare and startup industries.
Currently, Sufian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kinetik,, a venture-backed SaaS healthcare startup based out of New York City. Kinetik is developing innovative API & Platform solutions that connect key stakeholders in the non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) industry. We envision a future in which the coordination and delivery of medical transportation will be so seamless that any patient, anywhere, can request a healthcare ride in real time. To accomplish this, we have built the nation’s largest healthcare transportation infrastructure — one that digitally connects health plans, brokers, and providers. This enhanced level of connectivity significantly improves access to care for patients.