Healthcare Insights
Top 25 medical specialties by number of healthcare providers
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of patients experienced healthcare delays, some of which were caused by healthcare providers leaving the workforce in droves. While COVID may be with us for a very long time, the reality is that practice of healthcare has been changed forever. Whether you are healthcare practitioner, a healthcare system executive, or someone who provides goods and services to the healthcare industry, it’s critical to understand how many healthcare providers are practicing across common medical specialties, including internal medicine physicians, physician assistants and a variety of physician subspecialties.
We analyzed more than 2.5 million healthcare providers tracked in the Definitive Healthcare PhysicianView product to identify the number of healthcare providers by medical specialty. Nurses and providers without an identified specialty were excluded from our analysis.
The table below lists the top medical specialties by number of active healthcare providers.
| Rank | Medical specialty title | Number of healthcare providers | Explore dataset |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Therapy | 179,853 | Explore |
| 2 | Physician Assistant | 154,216 | Explore |
| 3 | Internal Medicine | 127,065 | Explore |
| 4 | Family Practice | 125,614 | Explore |
| 5 | Anesthesiology | 114,927 | Explore |
| 6 | Social Worker | 95,523 | Explore |
| 7 | Surgery | 95,477 | Explore |
| 8 | Psychology | 68,155 | Explore |
| 9 | Pediatric Medicine | 67,331 | Explore |
| 10 | Emergency Medicine | 62,217 | Explore |
| 11 | Chiropractic | 59,162 | Explore |
| 12 | Psychiatry | 50,646 | Explore |
| 13 | Optometry | 49,681 | Explore |
| 14 | Radiology | 46,648 | Explore |
| 15 | Obstetrics/Gynecology | 46,639 | Explore |
| 16 | Cardiology | 34,455 | Explore |
| 17 | Hospitalist | 29,389 | Explore |
| 18 | Neurology | 21,601 | Explore |
| 19 | Ophthalmology | 21,448 | Explore |
| 20 | Oncology | 18,680 | Explore |
| 21 | Podiatry | 18,547 | Explore |
| 22 | Gastroenterology | 18,466 | Explore |
| 23 | Pathology | 16,359 | Explore |
| 24 | Dermatology | 15,154 | Explore |
| 25 | Audiology | 14,525 | Explore |
Fig. 1. Data is from the Definitive Healthcare PhysicianView product and sourced from proprietary research, the NPI Registry and Physician Compare. Only specialties with at least 100 providers reporting a birth year are included. Data accurate as of July 2022.
What are the most common medical specialties?
The most common medical specialties by healthcare providers were therapists (n=179,853), including subspecialty areas for physical therapy (n=127,203) and occupational therapy(n=28,293), followed by physician assistants (n=157,216) and internal medicine (n=127,065).
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