Downloading embedded ArcGIS map or add it as a layer to ArcGIS online?

Question

I am interested in this map of rural hospital closures, so I'm trying to add it and its associated data/layers to a map I created in ArcGIS Online.

Is this possible? I selected "Add Layer from Web" but entering the URL returns an error, presumably because the URL doesn't point to any kind of web service. It's just an embedded map. If it's possible to simply download the data for each point, that's acceptable as well.

I'm open to the possibility that this isn't possible for various reasons, e.g. copyright.

Answer 1

It doesn't look like the hospital closure layer is available directly from arcgis.com. The data doesn't appear to be proprietary, just not conveniently available. With a bit of effort, you should be able to obtain the data. (Note: I am not a lawyer, and I haven't looked closely into the copyright status of this data. You should look into that yourself if you plan to redistribute the data.)

There's a downloadable table (in pdf format) of the hospital closures on that map available here. The table includes City and State data, but not lat/long or street addresses. So the challenge is getting this data in geospatial format.

• If generalized locations are acceptable for your purpose, you can join this table with a city layer.

• The street address and lat/long of each hospital are available individually in the form of a popup when you click on the hospital point. It might be possible to scrape this information from the website. Or you can manually copy and paste into a spreadsheet (it's only 109 data points, so this might be faster than learning to scrape data).

• Or you can use a geocoding service to get addresses and lat/long for the hospitals based on the hospital names.

• Or you can contact the Cecil G Sheps Center for Health Services Research directly and request the data. This would also be a good place to get an answer about whether and how you're allowed to re-use the data.

• Or you can do a nearest-neighbor join to a geospatial dataset of hospitals, eg

  • Hospitals on Data.gov from the Department of Homeland Security
  • Rural Hospitals Feature Layer by EsriMedia.