Primary Care Physician Workforce in Arkansas
Like most rural states, Arkansas continues to face primary care workforce challenges. As of September 2022, more than one-third of Arkansans resided in primary care health professional shortage areas. In March 2023, Monroe, Drew, and Phillips counties joined 11 other counties as geographic health professional shortage areas. In 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges ranked Arkansas at No. 13 among states with the highest need for primary care physicians.
With support from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences through funding from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, ACHI developed a dashboard and accompanying report featuring state- and county-level profiles of the primary care physician workforce in Arkansas, including demographics, activity status, and payer mix (e.g., Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance).
This work provides a baseline for the primary care physician workforce in the state, identifies challenges, and synthesizes findings to inform policy actions to address healthcare access issues.
Future additions to the dashboard may include annual updates of existing data, profiles of specialty physicians, and assessments of service utilization.
Please note that the dashboard may load slowly for certain views.
Key Takeaways
- Our analysis shows that in 2020 there were 2,778 active primary care physicians in Arkansas.
- Of those 2,778 active primary care physicians, 65% (n=1,813) were active full time (150 or more active days), 22% (n=617) were active part time (between 50 and 149 active days), 8% (n=212) were active limited time (between 10 and 49 active days), and 5% (n=136) were active very limited time (at least one but no more than nine active days).
- In 2020, 88% of full-time primary care physicians in Arkansas had patient panels consisting of more than 50% adults, while 12% of full-time primary care physicians in Arkansas had patient panels consisting of more than 50% children.
About the Data
Data sources for this project include Arkansas physician licensure files, physician files developed by NORC at the University of Chicago, CarePrecise physician files, the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative’s All-Payer Claims Database, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey five-year estimates. For information about the methodology, see the accompanying report.