The distribution of physicians across the United States reveals significant disparities, with California leading the pack at nearly ******* active doctors as of January 2025. This concentration of medical professionals in populous states highlights the ongoing challenge of ensuring adequate healthcare access nationwide. The stark contrast between California's physician count and Wyoming's mere ***** doctors underscores the need for targeted efforts to address healthcare workforce shortages in less populated areas. Primary care and specialist distribution California's dominance in the medical field extends beyond overall physician numbers. The state leads in both primary care physicians and specialists, accounting for over ** percent of each category nationally. This concentration of medical expertise in California reflects broader trends, with New York and Texas following as the states with the highest numbers of active primary care physicians. The distribution of specialists also mirrors national patterns, with psychiatry, surgery, and anaesthesiology among the most common specialties. Physician burnout While the number of physicians continues to grow, physician burnout remains a significant issue. There are large variations in rates of burnout depending on a physician's gender and specialty. For example, burnout is disproportionally high among women, affecting ** percent of female physicians and ** percent of male physicians. Meanwhile, emergency medicine physicians reported the highest levels of burnout among specialists, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to support the individual needs of doctors depending on their different circumstances.

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.

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 122963 physicians. In California, the specialties with the most physicians are psychiatry, emergency medicine, and anaesthesiology. Specialty areas In general, the most common specialty areas for physicians in the U.S. are emergency medicine, psychiatry, surgery, and anaesthesiology. 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.

As of January 2025, there were a total of 566,723 specialty physicians active in the United States. Of these, most were specialized in emergency medicine. Physician compensation Significant pay variations exist across specialties and regions, with orthopedic doctors and surgeons command the highest average annual salaries at 558,000 U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, the West North Central area offers the highest average physician compensation at 404,000 U.S. dollars annually. This region's higher pay likely stems from lower physician density in rural areas, creating less competition. Interestingly, doctors in Northeastern and Southwestern parts of the United States tend to earn less than their counterparts in other regions. Burnout among physicians Despite high salaries, U.S. physicians face high workload and stress in the workplace. Nearly half of surveyed doctors reported feeling burnout, with higher burnout rates among female doctors, younger physicians, and those in primary care compared to their counterparts. More effort to combat burnout is needed in the healthcare system. Increasing compensation was cited by physicians as the top measure to alleviate burnout, followed by adding support staff and offering more flexible schedules.

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.

Physicians (per 1,000 people) in United States was reported at 3.608 in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Physicians - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

In the United States, there were roughly 268 thousand primary care physicians (PCPs) actively working in 2021. Most PCPs were either specialized in family medicine or internal medicine. The third most common specialty for primary care physicians in the United States was pediatrics.

Number of Businesses statistics on the Primary Care Doctors industry in United States

As of 2022, the number of licensed physicians in the United States and the District of Columbia amounted to 1,044,734 physicians. This included both Doctors of Medicine and Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine. The number of licensed U.S. physicians has been steadily increasing since 2010.

The number of male physicians outnumber female physicians in the U.S. in most specialties. The only major exceptions are found in pediatrics, child and adolescent psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, although female physicians do slightly outnumber males in a few other specialties. As of 2021, there were around 68,400 male family medicine/general practice physicians compared to 50,000 women in this specialty.

Physicians in the U.S.

Both the number of doctors and rate of doctors in the U.S. have increased over the years. As of 2021, there were around 946,800 active doctors of medicine in the U.S. This was around 29.9 physicians per 10,000 civilian population. In 1995, this rate stood at 24.2 physicians per 10,000 population.

Physicians by state

The states with the highest overall number of active physicians are California, New York, Texas, and Florida. However, the states with the highest rate of physicians per 10,000 civilian population include Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland. The District of Columbia has the highest rate of physicians by a large margin, with around 74.6 physicians per 10,000 population. The state with the highest annual compensation for physicians is Oklahoma, where physicians earn an annual average of 337,000 dollars.

Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Physicians and surgeons occupations: 16 years and over (LEU0254487600A) from 2000 to 2019 about surgeons, physicians, medical, occupation, full-time, salaries, workers, 16 years +, wages, employment, and USA.

Forecast: Total Doctors in the US 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

The world of pain management has seen substantial progress with the advent of telemedicine. The surge in its acceptance among healthcare professionals transforms traditional care practices by enhancing accessibility and patient engagement. However, keeping up with the rapidly evolving regulations in telemedicine is triggering considerable investment in technology to facilitate a seamless transition. To tackle the rampant opioid crisis, many physicians are now focusing on multidisciplinary holistic pain management strategies instead of individual treatment. The healthcare community is transitioning towards more responsible prescription practices and collaborating with addiction experts, thus respecting stricter guidelines in response to societal needs. Industry-wide revenue has been growing at an average annualized 0.8% over the past five years and is expected to total $44.5 billion in 2024, when revenue will rise by an estimated 0.7%. Adopting patient-centric care, aiming to empower patients and make them active participants in their healthcare journey, is becoming a norm in pain management. It promotes a healthcare system that considers patients' unique needs and shared decision-making processes. This shift transforms patient experiences with an increased focus on patient education, rapport-building and participation. Furthermore, the sector is increasingly integrating digital health tools and AI analytics in practices, paving the way for more individualized treatment plans. There's a robust growth in the investment for interoperable technologies that facilitate a comprehensive understanding of a patient's health. Lastly, the sector is transitioning towards value-based care models, prioritizing overall quality outcomes over conventional fee-for-service systems. Industry revenue is forecast to grow at an annualized 3.2% over the five years through 2029 to total $52.2 billion.

This dataset comprises physician-level entries from the 1906 American Medical Directory, the first in a series of semi-annual directories of all practicing physicians published by the American Medical Association [1]. Physicians are consistently listed by city, county, and state. Most records also include details about the place and date of medical training. From 1906-1940, Directories also identified the race of black physicians [2].This dataset comprises physician entries for a subset of US states and the District of Columbia, including all of the South and several adjacent states (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia). Records were extracted via manual double-entry by professional data management company [3], and place names were matched to latitude/longitude coordinates. The main source for geolocating physician entries was the US Census. Historical Census records were sourced from IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System [4]. Additionally, a public database of historical US Post Office locations was used to match locations that could not be found using Census records [5]. Fuzzy matching algorithms were also used to match misspelled place or county names [6].The source of geocoding match is described in the “match.source” field (Type of spatial match (census_YEAR = match to NHGIS census place-county-state for given year; census_fuzzy_YEAR = matched to NHGIS place-county-state with fuzzy matching algorithm; dc = matched to centroid for Washington, DC; post_places = place-county-state matched to Blevins & Helbock's post office dataset; post_fuzzy = matched to post office dataset with fuzzy matching algorithm; post_simp = place/state matched to post office dataset; post_confimed_missing = post office dataset confirms place and county, but could not find coordinates; osm = matched using Open Street Map geocoder; hand-match = matched by research assistants reviewing web archival sources; unmatched/hand_match_missing = place coordinates could not be found). For records where place names could not be matched, but county names could, coordinates for county centroids were used. Overall, 40,964 records were matched to places (match.type=place_point) and 931 to county centroids ( match.type=county_centroid); 76 records could not be matched (match.type=NA).Most records include information about the physician’s medical training, including the year of graduation and a code linking to a school. A key to these codes is given on Directory pages 26-27, and at the beginning of each state’s section [1]. The OSM geocoder was used to assign coordinates to each school by its listed location. Straight-line distances between physicians’ place of training and practice were calculated using the sf package in R [7], and are given in the “school.dist.km” field. Additionally, the Directory identified a handful of schools that were “fraudulent” (school.fraudulent=1), and institutions set up to train black physicians (school.black=1).AMA identified black physicians in the directory with the signifier “(col.)” following the physician’s name (race.black=1). Additionally, a number of physicians attended schools identified by AMA as serving black students, but were not otherwise identified as black; thus an expanded racial identifier was generated to identify black physicians (race.black.prob=1), including physicians who attended these schools and those directly identified (race.black=1).Approximately 10% of dataset entries were audited by trained research assistants, in addition to 100% of black physician entries. These audits demonstrated a high degree of accuracy between the original Directory and extracted records. Still, given the complexity of matching across multiple archival sources, it is possible that some errors remain; any identified errors will be periodically rectified in the dataset, with a log kept of these updates.For further information about this dataset, or to report errors, please contact Dr Ben Chrisinger (Benjamin.Chrisinger@tufts.edu). Future updates to this dataset, including additional states and Directory years, will be posted here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/amd.References:1. American Medical Association, 1906. American Medical Directory. American Medical Association, Chicago. Retrieved from: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000543547.2. Baker, Robert B., Harriet A. Washington, Ololade Olakanmi, Todd L. Savitt, Elizabeth A. Jacobs, Eddie Hoover, and Matthew K. Wynia. "African American physicians and organized medicine, 1846-1968: origins of a racial divide." JAMA 300, no. 3 (2008): 306-313. doi:10.1001/jama.300.3.306.3. GABS Research Consult Limited Company, https://www.gabsrcl.com.4. Steven Manson, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, Tracy Kugler, and Steven Ruggles. IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 17.0 [GNIS, TIGER/Line & Census Maps for US Places and Counties: 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950; 1910_cPHA: ds37]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. 2022. http://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V17.05. Blevins, Cameron; Helbock, Richard W., 2021, "US Post Offices", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NUKCNA, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:8ROmiI5/4qA8jHrt62PpyA== [fileUNF]6. fedmatch: Fast, Flexible, and User-Friendly Record Linkage Methods. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/fedmatch/index.html7. sf: Simple Features for R. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sf/index.html

As of May 2024, the number of primary care physicians in U.S. amounted to 527,164. In comparison, there were 582,296 specialist physicians that year, making a total of over 1.1 million professionally active physicians in the U.S.

ONC uses the SK&A Office-based Provider Database to calculate the counts of medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants at the state and count level from 2011 through 2013. These counts are grouped as a total, as well as segmented by each provider type and separately as counts of primary care providers.

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.

This table provides statistics on the Number of Full-Time Equivalent Physicians by Specialty, based on fee-for-service payments under the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan (AHCIP). This table is an Excel version of a table in the “Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan Statistical Supplement” report published annually by Alberta Health.

Graph and download economic data for All Employees, Offices of Physicians (CES6562110001) from Jan 1972 to May 2025 about physicians, health, establishment survey, education, services, employment, and USA.

As of January 2025, the states with the highest number of active primary care physicians (PCPs) were California, New York, and Texas. As of that time, of the ******* PCPs in the United States, around ** percent were in the state of California. Physicians by specialty In the United States, the specialties with the highest number of active physicians include emergency medicine, psychiatry, surgery, and anaesthesiology. The most popular physician specialties in the state of California mirror this national trend. In 2024, California had over ***** psychiatrists and ***** surgeons. Physician burn-out Although being a physician can be a rewarding and lucrative profession, physicians often feel stressed and burned-out. In 2024, a survey of physicians in the U.S. found that ** percent of female and ** percent of male physicians felt burned out. Moreover, PCPs, employed physicians, and doctors aged 45 and under were more likely to be burned out than their counterparts.