By 2036, the United States will face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians. This is not a future problem — it is happening now, in every community, in every specialty. This report examines the data, the drivers, and the path forward.
SOURCES: AAMC 2024 PHYSICIAN WORKFORCE REPORT · HRSA PROJECTIONS 2023–2038 · AAPPR 2025 BENCHMARKING REPORT · ACGME 2024–2025 DATA
The physician shortage is not the product of a single failure — it is the convergence of demographic, structural, and systemic forces that have been building for decades. Understanding each driver is essential to crafting effective responses.
The U.S. Census Bureau projects a 34% surge in Americans aged 65 and older by 2036. Older adults consume healthcare at significantly higher rates — those over 65 account for 93% of chronic disease burden — driving demand for physicians far faster than supply can grow.
Burnout has reached crisis levels. A 2024 MGMA survey found 27% of medical groups lost a physician to early retirement due to burnout. Nearly 39% of active physicians report plans to retire early, accelerating the supply-side collapse at precisely the wrong moment.
Graduate Medical Education (GME) — the residency and fellowship training system — grows at only ~1% per year. Congressional caps on federally funded residency slots, unchanged since 1997, mean that even as medical school enrollment rises 28%, the training pipeline remains severely constrained.
The shortage is not evenly distributed. By 2038, HRSA projects rural (nonmetro) areas will face a 58% physician shortage while metro areas face only 5%. Over 100 rural hospitals have closed in the past decade, leaving millions of Americans without local access to care.
The AAMC's health equity scenario reveals a stark reality: if underserved populations had the same access to care as well-served populations, the U.S. would need an additional 117,100 to 202,800 physicians — today. The shortage is not just a supply problem; it is an access and equity crisis.
A comprehensive view of the current U.S. physician workforce — who is practicing, where they are, and the structural vulnerabilities that make the shortage inevitable.
Estimated active physicians · AAMC 2023
23.4% are age 65+ and approaching retirement · AMA 2024
Over one-third of the active physician workforce is nearing retirement age, creating a supply cliff that will accelerate the shortage through the 2030s.
Physician supply grows slowly — constrained by GME bottlenecks and retirement attrition. Demand accelerates as the population ages. The result is a widening gap that will reach 141,160 FTE physicians by 2038 under current trajectories.
Full-time equivalent (FTE) physicians in thousands · 2023–2038
AAMC 2024 Report — Range of shortage scenarios
Note: Some specialties may experience surpluses. Ranges reflect different demand scenarios.
Full-time equivalent physicians — Key milestones
Source: HRSA Health Workforce Projections, December 2025
Medical school enrollment is growing, but the training bottleneck at the GME level — and the brutal realities of physician recruiting — mean that new physicians cannot enter the workforce fast enough to close the gap.
As of the 2024–2025 academic year, 167,083 physicians are in residency and fellowship training programs across the United States — 82.3% in specialty programs and 17.7% in subspecialty programs. These trainees represent the future physician workforce, but they will not be available to practice for another 3–7 years, and the pipeline is growing too slowly to meet demand.
Total U.S. medical school enrollment · 2013–2023 (+28.1%)
Despite 28% enrollment growth, GME slots grow at only ~1%/year — the true bottleneck
The training bottleneck — more applicants than available slots
AAPPR 2025 Report — 15,000+ searches analyzed
No single intervention will solve the physician shortage. The path forward requires a coordinated portfolio of technology, policy, training, and care model innovations — deployed simultaneously across the healthcare system.
Augmenting physician capacity through intelligent systems
AI tools like Nuance DAX, Suki, and Google's MedLM are already reducing documentation time by 40–60%, allowing physicians to see more patients. FDA-cleared AI diagnostic tools in radiology, pathology, and dermatology can handle routine reads, freeing specialists for complex cases.
AI-powered triage systems can stratify patient risk, route low-acuity cases to APPs or telehealth, and predict deterioration — reducing unnecessary physician touchpoints by an estimated 20–30% in pilot programs.
Physicians spend 34% of their time on administrative tasks. AI-driven prior authorization, coding, scheduling, and EHR documentation tools can reclaim 2–4 hours per physician per day — the equivalent of adding 200,000+ physician-hours to the workforce annually.
Continuous AI monitoring of chronic disease patients (diabetes, heart failure, COPD) can detect deterioration early, reducing emergency visits and enabling proactive care management by a smaller physician workforce.
Modeling by RAND, McKinsey, and the AAMC suggests that a comprehensive implementation of AI augmentation, team-based care, telehealth expansion, and training reform could close 60–80% of the projected physician shortage gap by 2038 — without waiting for a new generation of physicians to complete training. The physician recruiting and staffing community has a critical role to play in accelerating adoption.
The physician recruiting and staffing community has unique insight into the workforce crisis — and unique leverage to help solve it. Share your ideas, vote on the best proposals, and help shape the industry's response.
We need AI tools that can match physician candidates to positions based on clinical skills, cultural fit, and community needs — not just specialty. The technology exists; the healthcare recruiting industry needs to adopt it at scale to reduce our 118-day average time-to-fill.
We lose 27% of physicians to burnout-related early retirement. Every physician we retain is one we don't have to recruit. Investing $50k in wellness programs saves $500k in recruiting costs. Health systems need to treat retention as a strategic priority, not an HR afterthought.
NYU and Kaiser Permanente have proven 3-year MD programs work. If we pair accelerated degrees with commitments to practice in underserved specialties or rural areas, we can get more physicians into practice faster while addressing geographic maldistribution.
The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (IMLC) has been transformative for telemedicine and locum tenens. Expanding it to all specialties and streamlining the process would allow physicians to serve where they're needed most, when they're needed — reducing coverage gaps in underserved areas.
The 1997 Balanced Budget Act cap on Medicare-funded GME slots is the single biggest structural barrier to physician supply growth. Congress must act. The AAMC's proposal for 3,000 new slots per year over 10 years would add 30,000 physicians to the workforce — a critical down payment on closing the gap.
75% of primary care visits could be handled asynchronously — patient submits symptoms and history via app, AI pre-processes and flags key issues, physician reviews and responds within 24 hours. One physician could handle 10x the patient volume for routine care, freeing in-person capacity for complex cases.
Physician recruiters, staffing professionals, and healthcare leaders are on the front lines of this crisis every day. Your collective intelligence is invaluable. Keep the conversation going.