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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The average for 2020 based on 1 countries was 2.05 doctors per 1,000 people. The highest value was in Brazil: 2.05 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This statistic displays the average physician-to-population ratio in select U.S. metropolitan areas as of 2013. During this year, there was an average of ***** physicians per 100,000 population in Detroit. Boston has one of the overall highest average wait times for a physician appointment. The average cumulative wait time is approximately **** days in 2014, which has decreased since 2004.

United States US: Physicians: per 1000 People data was reported at 2.568 Ratio in 2014. This records an increase from the previous number of 2.554 Ratio for 2013. United States US: Physicians: per 1000 People data is updated yearly, averaging 1.900 Ratio from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2014, with 39 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 2.704 Ratio in 2004 and a record low of 1.100 Ratio in 1960. United States US: Physicians: per 1000 People data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s USA – Table US.World Bank: Health Statistics. Physicians include generalist and specialist medical practitioners.; ; World Health Organization's Global Health Workforce Statistics, OECD, supplemented by country data.; Weighted average;

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.

Graph and download economic data for Medical Services Expenditures per Capita by Disease: Mental Illness , MEPS Account Basis (MNINEIPCMEPS) 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 12.71 per 1000 people in 2024 from 12.36 per 1000 people in 2023. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for the United States Nurses.

In 2021, in some specialties, female primary care physicians (PCPs) were more common than men. Geriatrics and pediatrics were specialties where PCPs were predominantly female in the United States. For instance, two-thirds of PCPs who specialized in pediatrics were women. On the other hand, just 41 percent of PCPs who specialized in internal medicine in the U.S. were female in 2021.

Long-term quantitative series for 20 Latin American countries, spanning from 1960 to 2020, on the number of hospital beds, physicians, nurses and healthcare expenditure.

Matus-Lopez, M. and Fernández Pérez, P. 2023. "Transformations in Latin American Healthcare: A Retrospective Analysis of Hospital Beds, Medical Doctors, and Nurses from 1960 to 2022". Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business.

The information was extracted from official reports and cross-country databases. Official reports were available in digital format in the Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) of Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). They were summary of four-year reports on Health Conditions in the Americas (PAHO 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002a), annual reports of Basic Indicators (PAHO 2002b, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013), Health in South America (PAHO 2012) and Core Indicators (PAHO 2016). Databases were Open Data Portal of the Pan American Health Organization (PLISA) (PAHO 2023), Core Indicator Database provided directly by PAHO (PAHO 2022), Data Portal of National Health Workforce Accounts of the World Health Organization (NHWA) (WHO 2022), and the Global Health Expenditure Database of the World Health Organization (GHED) (WHO 2023).

Serie 1. Hospital Beds per 1,000 inhabitants

Serie 2. Physicians per 10,000 inhabitants

Serie 3. Nurses per 10,000 inhabitants

Serie 4. Government spending on health, per capita. Constant US dollars of 2020

Cite as:

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

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.