Foreign-Trained Physicians in the United States: A Descriptive Profile

Abstract

More than a quarter of physicians in the United States are international medical graduates (IMGs). This statistic, although large, does not fully capture the importance of IMGs in certain specialties and locations. We provide a comprehensive profile of IMGs documenting where and in what specialties they work and how these distributions have changed over time. Estimates show that IMGs disproportionately work in densely populated, low-income communities with sicker residents and low physician density. IMGs are overrepresented in primary care and the lowest paying specialties, and their concentration in these specialties is growing. Calculations show that U.S. medical graduates exit the workforce at 2.5 times the exit rate of IMGs suggesting that in the near future IMGs will likely provide care for an increasingly larger share of Americans.