Supply and Demand of Emergency Medicine Board-certified Emergency Physicians by U.S. State, 2017

Our objective was to estimate the emergency medicine board-certified emergency physician (EMBC EP) workforce supply and demand by U.S. state.

To estimate state demand, we applied the methodology from our 2005 analysis to calculate full-time equivalent (FTE) EMBC EP demand for each emergency department (ED). The 2017 National Emergency Department Inventory-USA provided visit volumes for all EDs, while the American Board of Medical Specialties supplied the 2017 number of EMBC EPs per state. Assuming that at least one EMBC EP should be present 24/7 in each ED (requiring 5.35 FTEs minimum), we calculated the total FTEs required by dividing each ED's visit volume by the estimated average visits seen by an EMBC EP (3,548 visits per year) and then summed FTEs by state. The U.S. Census Bureau provided state demographic characteristics. We used multivariable linear regression to examine the association between state demographics and the density of EMBC EPs per state and compared 2017 results to our prior 2005 analysis.

There were 40,716 total EMBC EPs in 2017, fulfilling 77% of the estimated national demand. This was a substantial increase from 23,035 total EMBC EPs fulfilling 58% of demand in 2005. The 2017 supply ranged from 24% of demand in North Dakota to 142% in Hawaii. A lower density of EMBC EPs was associated with states in the Midwest and South (p < 0.001) and with a more rural population (p = 0.02). The absolute shortage of EMBC EPs worsened or remained the same in one-fourth of states.

While the total number of EMBC EPs nearly doubled between 2005 and 2017, a shortage of full-time coverage persists. The supply and demand vary greatly by state. Worsening absolute shortages in several states show that the distribution of EMBC EPs is not meeting demand across the United States, particularly in rural areas.