Among OECD countries in 2022, South Korea had the highest rate of yearly visits to a doctor per capita. On average, people in South Korea visited the doctors 15.7 times per year in person. Health care utilization is an important indicator of the success of a country’s health care system. There are many factors that affect health care utilization including healthcare structure and the supply of health care providers.

OECD health systems

Healthcare systems globally include a variety of tools for accessing healthcare, including private insurance based systems, like in the U.S., and universal systems, like in the U.K. Health systems have varying costs among the OECD countries. Worldwide, Europe has the highest expenditures for health as a proportion of the GDP. Among all OECD countries, The United States had the highest share of government spending on health care. Recent estimates of current per capita health expenditures showed the United States also had, by far, the highest per capita spending on health worldwide.

Supply of health providers

Globally, the country with the highest physician density is Cuba, although most other countries with high number of physicians to population was found in Europe. The number of graduates of medicine impacts the number of available physicians in countries. Among OECD countries, Latvia had the highest rate of graduates of medicine, which was almost twice the rate of the OECD average.

The average for 2020 based on 14 countries was 3.85 doctors per 1,000 people. The highest value was in Austria: 5.35 doctors per 1,000 people and the lowest value was in Hungary: 3.14 doctors per 1,000 people. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2021. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Austria leads the world in physician density with **** practicing doctors per thousand population in 2022, highlighting significant disparities in healthcare access globally. This stark contrast becomes evident when comparing Austria to countries like India, South Africa, and Indonesia, which have less than * physician per 1,000 people. Life expectancy and healthcare access Interestingly, countries with higher physician densities often correlate with higher life expectancies. Switzerland, for instance, boasts both a high physician density of **** per 1,000 people and the highest life expectancy globally at **** years. This relationship underscores the potential impact of accessible healthcare on population health. However, exceptions exist, as evidenced by the United States, where life expectancy has decreased in recent years despite having **** physicians per 1,000 people. Factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid epidemic have contributed to this decline. Healthcare expenditure and physician density While physician density is an important metric, it does not always directly correlate with healthcare spending. The United States, for example, has the highest per capita health expenditure among OECD countries, spending over ****** U.S. dollars per person in 2023. This is significantly higher than countries with greater physician densities like Austria and Germany. The U.S. also allocates the largest share of its GDP to healthcare, at **** percent. The United States is an outlier regarding the correlation between healthcare spending, resources and health outcomes.

In 2023 the countries with the most doctors per capita was Cuba, the country with the highest physician density. There were 84 physicians per every 10,000 of Cuba's population, however, the most recent data was from 2021. Other countries with high physician density were mostly found in Europe, including Monaco, Greece, Belgium, and Lithuania.

The average for 2020 based on 2 countries was 2.57 doctors per 1,000 people. The highest value was in Canada: 2.73 doctors per 1,000 people and the lowest value was in Mexico: 2.41 doctors per 1,000 people. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2021. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In 2021, the density rate for medical doctors in Kuwait was 32.5 per 10,000 people, the highest in that year among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The regional average of the density of physicians in the GCC was higher than the world average.

In Mexico, the number of practicing doctors amounted to around 2.56 professionals per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022, an increase compared to the figures reported a year earlier when there were around 2.51 practicing physicians per every thousand people. During the last year depicted, the number of physicians in Mexico totaled approximately 333,000 professionals. Density of doctors worldwide In a global comparison, Mexico ranks in an middle category for density of medical doctors per 1,000 population, similar to Canada and Colombia. Among the countries in the upper bracket for highest density of doctors are Cuba, Sweden, Belgium, and Uruguay. Along with Mexico’s moderate density of doctors, over 39 percent of the population was considered vulnerable due to lack of access to health services in Mexico as of 2022, up from around 21.5 percent a decade earlier. Health care in Mexico Nearly 33 million people in Mexico held public health insurance through Seguro Popular in 2020, which was replaced by a new institution at the beginning of that year, called INSABI (Instituto Nacional de Salud para el Bienestar). However, the IMSS (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social) led by a large margin as the largest provider of health insurance in the North American country.

This dataset provides values for MEDICAL DOCTORS reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

As of 2019, the south Indian state of Kerala had the highest density of doctors of about 42 per ten thousand population in the country. However, Jharkhand had the least density of doctors in the country of about four doctors per ten thousand people in the state.

Ireland: Doctors per 1,000 people: The latest value from 2021 is 4.05 doctors per 1,000 people, an increase from 3.46 doctors per 1,000 people in 2020. In comparison, the world average is 3.93 doctors per 1,000 people, based on data from 12 countries. Historically, the average for Ireland from 2011 to 2021 is 3.16 doctors per 1,000 people. The minimum value, 2.67 doctors per 1,000 people, was reached in 2011 while the maximum of 4.05 doctors per 1,000 people was recorded in 2021.

In 2023, there were almost 52 doctors per 10,000 population in Russia. The density of doctors in the country has gradually increased in recent years after a decline in 2015, when the figure fell to around 46 medical professionals per 10,000 residents. How many doctors work in Russia? The number of doctors in the country grew by 85,800 between 2015 and 2023. In total, approximately 759,000 physicians were employed in healthcare in Russia during that year. Over 567,000 medical doctors worked in the public sector, including educational, scientific, cultural, healthcare, and social services organizations, in 2022. Importance of doctors’ density during COVID-19 During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, countries with a low density of physicians have been suffering from limited healthcare resources and unequal access to medical assistance, as highlighted by the International Labor Organization Department of Statistics (Ilostat). Russia is the only non-high-income country among those with the highest doctors’ density worldwide. There were five infectious disease specialists per 100,000 inhabitants in the country as of April 2020.

Among presented Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, Slovakia had the highest number of oncologists per one million population, at 76 as of 2022. Hungary ranked second, with an oncology physician density of 74 per million population.

In 2021, there were approximately 2.56 doctors for every 1,000 inhabitants in South Korea. This was a slight increase compared to the preceding year. This ratio has increased steadily since 2000, with the exception of a slight drop in 2004. However, South Korea still has few doctors relative to its population. The OECD average was 3.3 doctors per 1,000 people, and among the full OECD member countries, only Mexico and Turkey had lower ratios. According to OECD data, key partners China, Brazil, India, South Africa, and Indonesia have ratios lower than Korea. At the other end of the spectrum is Austria with 5.48 doctors per 1,000 people, followed by Norway with 5.16 and Germany with 4.53. Shortage of medical staffs The Korean government officially declared a shortage of several thousand doctors across the nation and recommended the training of an additional 150 doctors every year to make up the shortfall. Furthermore, doctors of traditional Korean medicine are counted among the number of doctors, meaning there are even fewer doctors of modern medical sciences than official figures suggest. Yet there are several factors, such as resistance from doctors, preventing the government from simply increasing the number of medical graduates. Regional imbalances in the medical environmentSome experts refute the government’s claims that Korea faces a doctor shortage and point towards other factors. For example, Korea has a higher population density than other countries, meaning that the average Korean doctor meets with more patients than an Austrian or Norwegian one would. Indeed, half the population is concentrated in the Seoul Capital Area. Additionally, Koreans see doctors around 19 times a year on average, which is far more frequently than any other OECD nationals. Despite this, Korea spends a lower share of its GDP on medical expenditures than other OECD countries, implying that medical personnel do more work for less financial compensation. Regional disparities where doctors are concentrated in Seoul and other major cities is also an issue. The doctor-to-people ratio in Seoul is higher than the national ratio, and the same as the OECD average. Many argue that a shortage of nurses is a greater concern than an alleged shortage of doctors. While the number of trained nurses is adequate, many leave because of harsh working conditions.

This statistic shows a ranking of the estimated average number of physicians per 1,000 inhabitants in 2020 in Latin America, differentiated by country.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in more than 150 countries and regions worldwide. All input data are sourced from international institutions, national statistical offices, and trade associations. All data has been are processed to generate comparable datasets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).

In 2025, there were approximately **** medical doctors per 1,000 people in Brazil, an increase compared to the physician density of about **** doctors per 1,000 inhabitants reported a year earlier. That same year, the number of doctors registered in the South American country totaled about ******* professionals, most of them based in São Paulo.

In 2019, Lithuania had the most practicing doctors per 1,000 people among Central and Eastern European countries. On the other hand, Poland had the least, only 2.38 doctors per 1,000 people.

Among OECD member countries, the United States had the highest percentage of gross domestic product spent on health care as of 2023. The U.S. spent nearly 16 percent of its GDP on health care services. Germany, France and Japan followed the U.S. with distinctly smaller percentages. The United States had both significantly higher private and public spending on health compared with other developed countries. Why compare OECD countries?OECD stands for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is an economic organization consisting of 38 members, mostly high-income countries and committed to democratic principles and market economy. This makes OECD statistics more comparable than statistics of developed and undeveloped countries. Health economics is an important matter for the OECD, even more since increasing health costs and an aging population have become an issue for many developed countries. Health costs in the U.S.  A higher GDP share spent on health care does not automatically lead to a better functioning health system. In the case of the U.S., high spending is mainly because of higher costs and prices, not due to higher utilization. For example, physicians’ salaries are much higher in the U.S. than in other comparable countries. A doctor in the U.S. earns almost twice as much as the average physician in Germany. Pharmaceutical spending per capita is also distinctly higher in the United States. Furthermore, the U.S. also spends more on health administrative costs compare to other wealthy countries.

The number of active physicians in Poland increased by 0.1 per 1,000 inhabitants (+3 percent) in 2021. Therefore, the number in Poland reached a peak in 2021 with 3.44 per 1,000 inhabitants. Find more key insights for the number of active physicians in countries like Norway, Luxembourg, and Italy.

The lack of medical services in West Africa represents a serious issue in sanitary emergency. As of April 2020, different West African countries counted less than a doctor every 10,000 inhabitants. Especially, Sierra Leone had three physicians per 100,000 individuals, the lowest density of medical doctors in West Africa. Moreover, Burkina Faso was estimated to have only 11 ventilators in the whole country for a population of almost 20 million people.

The average number of doctors across the OECD countries in 2019 equaled to 35 per 10,000 inhabitants. The member countries of OECD are mostly high-income countries, whereas Nigeria is an emerging economy and it belongs to countries with lower middle-incomes.

As of the end of 2020, there were around 269 practicing physicians per 100,000 inhabitants in Japan, up from approximately 259 in 2018. The total number of physicians engaging in medical care amounted to roughly 339.6 thousand in 2020. Despite keeping the highest numbers and density of hospitals worldwide, Japan is not included in the list of leading countries when it comes to the count and density of physicians. Japanese hospitals are, therefore, repeatedly said to be suffering from the shortage of physicians and other medical staff.

Profile of physicians

In 2020, the average age of all registered physicians in Japan was 50.5 years old, indicating a constant increase in the last two decades. Of the total, around 23 percent were female physicians. Tokushima Prefecture had the highest number of physicians among all 47 prefectures, with about 356.7 physicians available per 100,000 population.

Physicians employed at hospitals

In Japan, medical facilities can be divided into two categories: hospitals and medical clinics. Japanese hospitals have facilities for the admission of 20 or more inpatients, while medical clinics provide a smaller scale of services. In 2020, the number of physicians working at hospitals exceeded 216 thousand, showing a continuous growth in recent years. In terms of specialty, the highest number of physicians, around 22 thousand, were working at internal medicine departments in the hospitals. Roughly 10.5 thousand were specializing in surgery.