Distribution of the U.S. Primary Care Workforce

The U.S. primary care workforce includes approximately 209,000 practicing primary care physicians, 56,000 nurse practitioners (NPs), and 30,000 physician assistants (PAs) practicing primary care, for a total of nearly 295,000 primary care professionals.

Uneven geographic distribution of the health care workforce creates problems with access to primary care. While primary care physicians are more likely to practice in rural areas than are non-primary care specialists, they still are more concentrated in urban areas. Within the primary care physician workforce, family physicians and general practitioners are more likely than either general internists or pediatricians to practice in rural areas and to distribute themselves proportionally to the U. S. population.

NPs and PAs are more likely than physicians to work in rural areas (16% vs. 11%), and primary care NPs and PAs are much more likely to be rural (28% and 25%, respectively). This rural distribution is higher than that of primary care physicians as a whole and similar to that of family physicians (22%).