How clinic groups find towns and suburbs without a clinic nearby
Start from a list of towns, draw the area each can reach in a short drive, count residents and clinics inside it, and rank the towns by people per clinic.
A clinic group finds towns without a clinic by turning the question around: instead of looking at a map for empty spaces, it starts from a list of towns and suburbs, draws the area each one can reach in a short drive, and counts two things inside that area: the residents, and the medical clinics. Towns where many people can reach no clinic, or only one, rise to the top. The list that results is short enough to visit and specific enough to take to a landlord.
This article is for the growth and network teams of general practice groups, urgent care operators, dental and physiotherapy groups, and the health authorities that plan with them. It stays on one task: ranking candidate towns by how poorly they are served today. Choosing the building inside a town is a different job, covered elsewhere.
Why start from towns, not from the map
A heat map of clinics shows where clinics are. It does not show where people are left out, because large empty areas are often farmland or parks with nobody in them. Starting from towns fixes that: every row is a place where people live, with a name the board recognises. The candidate list can come from a national list of localities, the group's own expansion wish list, or the suburbs around its existing clinics.
The measures for each town
- Reach. The Travel area block draws the area each town's centre can reach in, say, 10 or 15 minutes by car. When an area cannot be drawn on the roads, the block uses a straight-line estimate and says so in the run.
- Residents. Demographics counts the people living in that area, with age groups. It covers some countries, among them Australia, Canada, France, India, Thailand and Egypt; not the United Kingdom or the United States.
- Clinics. Nearby places counts medical clinics in the same area, and can split them into chains and independents and give the nearest one's distance.
- People per clinic. A Calculated field divides residents by clinics, with zero clinics flagged on its own.
How to read the ranking
Read three bands rather than a single number. Towns with no clinic in reach and enough residents to support one are the clearest gaps. Towns with one clinic and a high number of people per clinic come next: the clinic there may be full, or it may be poorly rated, which the rating field shows. Towns where people per clinic is close to the region's middle are served; leave them unless something else, such as a large share of older residents, argues for them.
What city figures say about density
Even inside big cities, clinic supply is uneven, which is why the town-level count matters. xMap's places database lists 297 medical clinics within 10 km of the centre of Sydney and 329 within 10 km of the centre of Toronto (November 2026). Both are cities where population figures exist, so a group can compare each suburb's residents with its clinics.
Most clinics in both cities are independent, which matters for a group: in a town with one independent clinic, buying or partnering with it can be faster than opening next door.
A worked example
Here is a made-up example. A general practice group in Victoria, Australia, has twelve clinics around Melbourne and wants two more in outer suburbs and nearby towns. It lists 30 candidates. For each, the flow draws a 15-minute drive area, counts residents and clinics inside it, and divides.
- Upload the 30 towns with their positions as a table in My data.
- Travel area draws a 15-minute car area around each town's centre.
- Demographics counts residents in each area, with the share aged 60 and over.
- Nearby places counts medical clinics in each area, with the nearest one's distance and the average rating.
- A Calculated field works out residents per clinic, and Sort and limit keeps the ten highest.
In this made-up result, four towns have no clinic within 15 minutes and more than 8,000 residents each; three have one clinic rated well below the group's own; the rest are served. The four become the shortlist, and the three are flagged for a conversation about partnership.
Mistakes to avoid
- Using the same circle for city and country. Fifteen minutes in a dense suburb covers a few streets; in the country it covers several villages. A drive area handles this; a fixed radius does not.
- Counting the group's own clinics as rivals. Match the results with your clinic list and drop your own, or the towns next to your clinics will look served by you twice.
- Trusting a zero without a look. Open the map for every town that shows no clinic and check the area by eye.
- Planning in a country without population figures as if it had them. In the United Kingdom or the United States, rank by clinics per town and the distance to the nearest clinic instead.
Doing it with an AI employee
Put the flow on a monthly Schedule and it becomes an AI employee that keeps the ranking fresh as clinics open and close. The blocks in order: Schedule, My data (the towns), Travel area, Demographics, Nearby places, Calculated field, Sort and limit, an xMap LLM block that writes one line per town on why it ranks where it does, then Show on a map and Email. Each month the inbox gets the top towns, what changed since last month and a map.
Ready-made starting points: Neighbourhoods far from a hospital, Villages with no health centre nearby and Where children are far from a paediatrician.
Questions
Can I rank towns in a country without population data?
Yes, by clinics within reach and the distance to the nearest clinic. You lose the residents per clinic measure, so say so in the ranking.
Should I use a drive time or a walking time?
A drive time for towns and outer suburbs, where most patients drive. A walking area suits dense city neighbourhoods.
Does a clinic count include hospitals?
Only if you add the hospital types. Decide whether a hospital's outpatients compete with your clinic, and count them on their own if they do.
How often does the ranking change?
Slowly. Monthly is enough for most groups; the useful news is a new clinic opening in a town on your shortlist.