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.

The states with the most number of active physicians include California, New York, Texas, and Florida. California currently has the most number of active physicians of any U.S. state, with around 125,566 physicians. In California, the specialties with the most physicians are psychiatry, emergency medicine, and anesthesiology. Specialty areas In general, the most common specialty areas for physicians in the U.S. are emergency medicine, psychiatry, surgery, and anesthesiology. As of 2024, there were around 58,900 psychiatrists in the U.S. Concerning the gender distribution of specialty physicians, males out number females in almost every specialty, with exceptions found in mainly in various pediatric disciplines, and obstetrics and gynecology. Compensation The specialty areas with the highest average annual compensation are plastic surgery, orthopedics, and cardiology. As of 2024, a physician in orthopedics earned an average of 558,000 U.S. dollars per year. Male physicians still earn more than their female counterparts in both primary care and specialty settings. This difference is especially large in specialty settings where male physicians earn more than 100,000 dollars more per year than female physicians.

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.

Health professionals, especially primary care physicians, are in high demand in many parts of the U.S. Some areas are experiencing health professional shortages. This map shows the ratio of population to primary care physicians in the U.S. Areas in dark red show where there are less primary care physicians per person.The data comes from County Health Rankings, a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, measure the health of nearly all counties in the nation and rank them within states. The layer used in the map comes from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, and the full documentation for the layer can be found here.County data are suppressed if, for both years of available data, the population reported by agencies is less than 50% of the population reported in Census or less than 80% of agencies measuring crimes reported data.

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 2022, the number of licensed physicians in the United States and the District of Columbia amounted to 1,062,460 physicians. At the time, the national population was roughly 333 million, which yielded a physician-to-population ratio of 313 licensed physicians per 100,000 population. The density of licensed U.S. physicians has steadily increased since 2010.

In 2019, there were around 73 active physicians per 10,000 civilians in the District of Columbia, followed by the state of Massachusetts with around 48 active physicians per 10,000 civilians. This statistic shows the top 10 U.S. states by number of active physicians per 10,000 civilian population in 2019.

Australia Physicians: per 1000 People data was reported at 3.981 Ratio in 2021. This records an increase from the previous number of 3.906 Ratio for 2020. Australia Physicians: per 1000 People data is updated yearly, averaging 2.491 Ratio from Dec 1961 (Median) to 2021, with 43 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 3.981 Ratio in 2021 and a record low of 1.100 Ratio in 1961. Australia Physicians: per 1000 People data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Australia – Table AU.World Bank.WDI: Social: Health Statistics. Physicians include generalist and specialist medical practitioners.;World Health Organization's Global Health Workforce Statistics, OECD, supplemented by country data.;Weighted average;This is the Sustainable Development Goal indicator 3.c.1 [https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/].

Physicians (per 1,000 people) in Guatemala was reported at 1.28 in 2020, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Guatemala - Physicians - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on March of 2025.

As of May 2024, the total number of professionally active physicians in the United States amounted to 1,109,460 physicians. From a state perspective, California had the most number of active physicians with over 119 thousand physicians, followed by New York. On the other hand, with just 1,245 physicians, Wyoming had the least number of active physicians in the United States.

Graph and download economic data for Medical Services Expenditures per Capita by Disease: Mental Illness , Blended Account Basis (MNINEIPCBLEND) from 2000 to 2021 about mental health, disease, physicians, healthcare, medical, health, expenditures, per capita, services, and USA.

Nurses in the United States increased to 12.19 per 1000 people in 2023 from 12.05 per 1000 people in 2022. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United States Nurses.

In 2019, there were nearly 30 active physicians per 10,000 resident population in the United States. This statistic shows the number of active physicians per 10,000 resident population in the United States from 1975 to 2019.

This dataset describes the number and density of health care services in each census tract in the United States. The data includes counts, per capita densities, and area densities per tract for many types of businesses in the health care sector, including doctors, dentists, mental health providers, hospitals, nursing homes, and pharmacies.

Government Doctor: Kerala: Average Population Served per Doctor data was reported at 4,791.000 Person in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 6,810.000 Person for 2016. Government Doctor: Kerala: Average Population Served per Doctor data is updated yearly, averaging 7,060.000 Person from Dec 2004 (Median) to 2017, with 11 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 10,308.000 Person in 2006 and a record low of 4,791.000 Person in 2017. Government Doctor: Kerala: Average Population Served per Doctor data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence. The data is categorized under India Premium Database’s Health Sector – Table IN.HLB002: Health Human Resources: Number of Doctors: Government.

Government Doctor: Sikkim: Average Population Served per Doctor data was reported at 2,437.000 Person in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 2,547.000 Person for 2016. Government Doctor: Sikkim: Average Population Served per Doctor data is updated yearly, averaging 2,515.000 Person from Dec 2004 (Median) to 2017, with 10 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 3,180.000 Person in 2004 and a record low of 1,622.000 Person in 2010. Government Doctor: Sikkim: Average Population Served per Doctor data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence. The data is categorized under India Premium Database’s Health Sector – Table IN.HLB002: Health Human Resources: Number of Doctors: Government.

Government Doctor: Goa: Average Population Served per Doctor data was reported at 3,883.000 Person in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 3,037.000 Person for 2016. Government Doctor: Goa: Average Population Served per Doctor data is updated yearly, averaging 3,432.000 Person from Dec 2004 (Median) to 2017, with 11 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 4,883.000 Person in 2010 and a record low of 1,718.000 Person in 2008. Government Doctor: Goa: Average Population Served per Doctor data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence. The data is categorized under India Premium Database’s Health Sector – Table IN.HLB002: Health Human Resources: Number of Doctors: Government.

This statistic shows the total number of doctors of medicine in the United States from 1949 to 2015. In 1949, there were 201,277 doctors of medicine in the United States. Some 50 years later, the number was around four times as high. In 2015, the exact number of doctors of medicine was 1,085,783.

Aggregate data from the records of the state bureaus of the census

This dataset describes the number and density of health care services in each census tract in the United States. The data includes counts, per capita densities, and area densities per tract for many types of businesses in the health care sector, including doctors, dentists, mental health providers, nursing homes, and pharmacies.