As worry surrounding the physician shortage in the U.S. continues, promising numbers were released this week regarding board certifications.

The figures, which were announced on Monday by the American Board of Medical Specialties in the 2018-2019 ABMS Board Certification Report, show a 2.5% increase over the last year in board certifications, with approximately 940,000 physicians now board certified across 40 specialties and 87 subspecialties.

Of the nearly one million board certified physicians, the largest certifying specialties were Internal Medicine (238,913), Pediatrics (105,685), and Family Medicine (91,208); Colon and Rectal Surgery (2,421), Medical Genetics and Genomics (2,630), and Nuclear Medicine (4,285) were among the smallest.

Other items of note from the report include:

• Board certified physicians, when grouped by specialty, were comprised of 59% medical, 27% surgical, and 14% hospital.
• Nearly half of all board certified physicians came from only ten states: California (104,258), New York (70,849), Texas (59,208), Florida (48,140), Pennsylvania (40,975), Illinois (36,240), Ohio (31,101), Massachusetts (30,462), New Jersey (26,800), and North Carolina (25,993).
• States with the fewest board certified physicians included Wyoming (1,100), North Dakota (1,755), Alaska (1,917), South Dakota (2,108), and Delaware (2,349).

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