A Census of Actively Licensed Physicians in the United States, 2016

Abstract

An accurate understanding of the demographic and state medical licensure characteristics of physicians in the United States is critical for health care workforce planning. Overall changes in the nation's population demographics, state and federal medical regulatory policies and dynamics surrounding the ongoing health care reform debate further highlight the need to have an up-to-date census of actively licensed physicians across all medical specialties. This article uses data received by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) from the nation's state medical and osteopathic licensing boards to report and summarize key features of actively licensed physicians in the United States and the District of Columbia. Our biennial census, current through the end of 2016, identifies a total of 953,695 actively licensed allopathic and osteopathic physicians serving a national population of 323 million people. This represents a net physician-increase of 12% from the 2010 census. From 2010 to 2016, the actively licensed U.S. physician-to-population ratio increased from 277 physicians per 100,000-population to 295 physicians per 100,000-population. Females now make up one-third of all licensed physicians, with osteopathic physicians and Caribbean medical graduates continuing to demonstrate substantial increases in both their absolute numbers and as a percentage of all actively licensed physicians from the 2010 to 2016 time period.