Ophthalmic care may not align with patient need: An analysis on state-wide patient needs and provider density between 2008 and 2022.

Purpose: This study aims to assess the extent to which the demand for ophthalmologic care among patients at the state level is reflected in Google Trends data, serving as an indicator of patient desire in ophthalmology.

Methods: For each state, patient interest in ophthalmologic care was estimated using the Google Trends resource measuring web search and YouTube search rates for multiple ophthalmologic terms. We compared the change in search for ophthalmologic terms over time and used ordinary least squares regression to evaluate whether search interest for ophthalmologic terms was able to predict the rate of practicing ophthalmologists in each state. We also compare the changing rates of searches across the web and YouTube to evaluate the resources patients are most likely to utilize.

Results: From 2008 to 2022, web search rates for general ophthalmology related terms increased by 43.98%, while search interest for retinal specific terms increased by 19.51%. YouTube specific results for general ophthalmology terms increased by 55.83% while search for retinal terms fell by 58.48%. Ophthalmologic and retinal specific search interest was not significantly associated with either outcome.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that patient information needs, demographic elements, and the educational backgrounds of residents and fellows - those important factors - are surprisingly poorly correlated with ophthalmology provider density. Furthermore, we observed no noteworthy correlation between the search interest in ophthalmology and the overall density of ophthalmologists or retinal specialists. This implies that there is a pressing need to explore and implement strategies aimed at better aligning these influencing factors the choices made by ophthalmologists in selecting their practice locations to bridge the gap between healthcare availability and public interest.