Data Illustrate Geographic Dispersal of Family Physicians, Other Primary Care Professionals

Family physicians are the most likely of any physician specialty or subspecialty to practice in rural areas and the most likely to be geographically distributed in the same proportion as the U.S. population, according to a one-page fact sheet published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on Feb. 3. The data, which are based on research by the AAFP's Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care, found that 22.5 percent of family physicians practice in rural areas, compared with 9.7 percent of all physicians who do so.