The average for 2020 based on 2 countries was 2.23 doctors per 1,000 people. The highest value was in Mexico: 2.41 doctors per 1,000 people and the lowest value was in Brazil: 2.05 doctors per 1,000 people. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2021. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

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.

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 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 Mexico, the number of practicing doctors amounted to around **** professionals per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022, an increase compared to the figures reported a year earlier when there were around **** practicing physicians per every thousand people. During the last year depicted, the number of physicians in Mexico totaled approximately ******* 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 ** percent of the population was considered vulnerable due to lack of access to health services in Mexico as of 2022, up from around **** percent a decade earlier. Health care in Mexico Nearly ** 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.

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.

Finland Population Per Medical Doctors Graduates was up 0.5% in 2019, from a year earlier.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union consistently had more physicians per 100,000 population than the United States, with the U.S. having roughly two thirds the number of doctors per capita that the USSR had. In real numbers, there were 1.05 million physicians in the Soviet Union in 1985, compared with 0.58 million in the U.S.. In contrast, the U.S. had more dentists per capita than the Soviet Union in these years (which had notoriously bad overall dental care), while the share of nurses was higher in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, but higher in the U.S. in the 1980s. Healthcare in the Soviet Union Despite this relatively large difference in the number of doctors, the death rate in the Soviet Union increased greatly in these years, while it fell in the U.S.. Until the 1970s, healthcare in the Soviet Union had been a centralized system, among the most competent and reliable in the world, and it oversaw significant improvements in the living standards of Soviet citizens while maintaining developmental pace with the west. This system was overhauled in the 1970s, however, and the economic downturn of the following two decades meant that the Soviet healthcare system then deteriorated. Internal standards dropped, less time was spent on patients, and access to medicines (particularly antibiotics) and equipment fell. The supposedly "free" system also became increasingly dominated by under the table payments, where citizens could be expected to pay 500 rubles (2.5 times the average monthly salary) for an operation or baby delivery.

While the number of physicians and hospital beds increased in the 1970s and 1980s, the lack of training saw an overall decline in the standard of healthcare provided. In these decades, a private healthcare system also opened for Soviet elites, and a disproportionate amount of healthcare professionals defected from state-run hospitals. Following Soviet dissolution in the 1990s, attempted reforms in successor states often failed due to economic mismanagement, and the quality of healthcare dropped even further in many areas, before gradually improving in the past two decades.

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

Medical Doctors in the United States increased to 2.77 per 1000 people in 2019 from 2.74 per 1000 people in 2018. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United States Medical Doctors.

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

The average for 2020 based on 2 countries was 3.67 doctors per 1,000 people. The highest value was in Australia: 3.9 doctors per 1,000 people and the lowest value was in New Zealand: 3.43 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 2023, there were approximately 2.66 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. An attempt to increase the number of medical student admissions quotas in February 2024 led to an ongoing strike of healthcare workers and conflict between medical professionals and the government. 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 over 21 times per 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.

Forecast: Population Per Medical Doctors Graduates in Italy 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

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.

Forecast: Population Per Medical Doctors Graduates in France 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

In 2021, the density rate for medical doctors in Kuwait was **** 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.

Forecast: Population Per Medical Doctors Graduates in Germany 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

Portugal's Percentage of physician population is 5.12[Per 1,000 live births] which is the 5th highest in the world ranking. Transition graphs on Percentage of physician population in Portugal and comparison bar charts (USA vs. China vs. Portugal), (Dominican Republic vs. Jordan vs. Portugal) are used for easy understanding. Various data can be downloaded and output in csv format for use in EXCEL free of charge.