medicaid-utils includes geographic classification features for assigning rural/urban status and primary care service areas to beneficiaries based on their ZIP code.

The person summary preprocessing automatically assigns rural/urban codes when preprocess=True:

from medicaid_utils.preprocessing import max_ps
ps = max_ps.MAXPS(year=2012, state="WY", data_root="/data/cms")
# df now has ruca_code, rucc_code, and rural/urban flags

Based on the USDA RUCA 3.1 classification:

• Codes 1–3: Urban
• Codes 4–10: Rural

Based on the USDA Rural-Urban Continuum Codes:

• Codes 1–3: Metro counties
• Codes 4–9: Non-metro counties (4–7 urban, 8–9 rural)

PCSA codes are assigned based on ZIP code crosswalks from the Dartmouth Atlas.

The other_datasets.zip module provides utilities for building geographic crosswalks:

from medicaid_utils.other_datasets import zip as zip_utils
# Generate a ZIP-to-PCSA-to-RUCA crosswalk
zip_utils.generate_zip_pcsa_ruca_crosswalk()

The geographic data bundled with medicaid-utils was compiled from: