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The Dartmouth
July 9, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Med. workforce to shrink, prof. finds

The American Medical Association underestimates the number of young physicians in the workforce and overestimates the number of elderly physicians, many of whom have retired, according to a study by Dartmouth economics professor Douglas Staiger. The study predicts that the future physician workforce will likely younger, but also smaller, than previously expected.

Staiger, working with colleagues at Vanderbilt University and the Congressional Budget Office, found that statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau are better indicators of the number of physicians in the country.

The study was published in the Oct. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers analyzed data from the AMA Masterfile, a membership list of all physicians in the country, and the U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey. The team found discrepancies between the two, particularly regarding the number of active doctors in the population and their ages.

The AMA Masterfile fails to keep pace with the number of retiring physicians and foreign medical graduates who come to practice in the United States, Staiger said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

The Census Bureau Population Survey, on the other hand, uses samples of the population to determine the number of practicing physicians, avoiding the problem of faulty or outdated reporting. The Census Bureau estimated 51 percent fewer active physicians over the age of 65 and 10 percent fewer physicians in the population overall than did the AMA Masterfile. The Census Bureau projected that by 2020, 71 percent of active physicians will be below 55 years old, while the Masterfile estimates that will be true for only 61 percent.

Staiger said he began the study in an attempt to identify why the Masterfile underestimates the number of retiring doctors. Previous research had identified inefficiency in the AMA's method, but had nothing to compare the Masterfile with.

"We had previously used the census to study the nurse workforce," Staiger said. "It's good at counting doctors."

The CPS, however, provides no information about a physician's specialty or the geographic area where a physician practices, making it difficult to examine the concentration of physicians by region or medical field.

The study suggests that the AMA could improve its accuracy by contacting elderly physicians for information about retirement rates, Staiger said. The organization can also "cut" the number of elderly doctors on its list to minimize the numerical discrepancy, he said.

Staiger said the study does not address the ongoing debate about the nation's need for physicians. Some analysts believe that the current supply of doctors is not sufficient to meet the country's growing need and that the United States will soon face a massive shortage of medical care, while others believe supply will exceed demand, Staiger said.

"There's a raging policy debate [about the demand for physicians]," Dartmouth Medical Scchol professor David Goodman, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Any paper on the subject gets twisted into that policy discussion."

Goodman said he believes that the number of physicians will continue to grow for a few more years, "after which point it will flatten out."

The study also looked at career differences between male and female doctors. Male physicians tend to work long hours in their 30s and 40s, but work less as they age and often retire relatively early, Staiger said. Female physicians, however, work more hours in their 40s and 50s, once they have passed childbearing age, and retire later, according to the study.