As Arkansas works to expand graduate medical education capacity, understanding where physicians train remains important for long-term workforce planning. In-state residency programs are a key driver of retention, although many physicians continue to enter the workforce through training pathways outside the state, including international medical education.
ACHI analyzed Arkansas State Medical Board licensure data for newly licensed Arkansas physicians who reported a residency completion date between 2021 and 2025. The analysis examines where those physicians reported completing residency and attending medical school. Unlike physician retention analyses, which generally begin with a medical school or residency location and then measure where those physicians ultimately practice, this analysis begins with physicians with active licenses in Arkansas and looks backward at their self-reported training history. As a result, the analysis does not include all physicians who trained in Arkansas.
Key Findings
- A total of 972 newly licensed physicians in Arkansas reported completing residency between 2021 and 2025.
- Of those physicians, 562 (58%) completed a residency in Arkansas and 410 (42%) completed a residency out of state.
- Overall, 308 (32%) physicians had both residency training and medical school education in Arkansas.
Additional information on physician training pathways is available on our Arkansas Healthcare Workforce page.
About the Data
Physicians with an active license in Arkansas and a self-reported residency completion date between 2021 and 2025 were included in the analysis. Education and residency histories in licensure files are self-reported free-text entries, so school and residency program names were entered consistently. ACHI reviewed and standardized those entries for analysis. Physicians were counted once in the analysis. For physicians reporting multiple residencies, those who completed a residency in Arkansas were included in the Arkansas residency count.
