Rural Family Physician Workforce Shrinks 11% Between 2017 & 2023

Nationwide, the number of family physicians serving rural areas declined by 11% between 2017 and 2023, from 11,847 in 2017 to 10,544 in 2023, according to a recent analysis.

Researchers analyzed data from the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile for each year from 2017 to 2023. They identified all actively practicing family physicians in the 50 states aged 65 years or younger who were not currently in training and were not hospitalists.

Regionally, over the period under analysis, the West had the lowest loss percentage, at 3.2%, and the Northeast had the highest, at 15.3%. The . . .