The Center recently completed a research study for the Division of Shortage Designation at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to identify and evaluate different methods for identifying facilities and communities in the U.S. with critical shortages of registered nurses (RNs). Working under the guidance of a national advisory panel, the research team explored a number of methods in each of two broad categories, methods that incorporate both facility and geographic data and methods that use only geographic data. The report of this research documents the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and identifies approaches that appear to be especially effective or promising. The report is available at: HRSA