As of September 30, 2020, more than 81 million Americans lived in over 7,200 areas or settings designated by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) as a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA). An HPSA is a geographic area, population group, or facility that has poor access to healthcare services because it lacks a sufficient number of primary care, dental or mental health care providers. In the primary care realm, HRSA designation criteria is based upon the population within the HPSA relative to the number of primary care providers that service the area. For HRSA purposes, primary care providers include Doctors of Medicine (MD) or Doctors of Osteopathy (DO) who provide services as general or family practitioners, general internal medicine physicians, pediatricians, obstetricians or gynecologists. Although the population-to-provider ratio needed to qualify for designation varies by HPSA type (geographic, population or facility), all HPSAs with a primary care shortage designation have a population-to-provider ratio that meets or exceeds certain thresholds established by federal regulations. Areas designated as an HPSA are eligible to participate in federal programs aimed at attracting more primary care providers to work with these medically underserved populations. The HRSA estimates that, as of September 30, 2020, all primary care HPSAs in the U.S. would need nearly 15,000 more providers to eliminate all shortage designations.
HPSAs in the five-state Great Lakes region account for just under 14% of the U.S. population who live in primary care shortage areas. To eliminate the shortage, the HRSA estimates that Great Lakes region HPSAs would need nearly 1,600 more primary care providers. Here is a summary look at the primary care shortage in the Great Lakes region:
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| The Primary Care Shortage in the Great Lakes Region |
| State | (1) HPSAs | (2) Population | (3) Shortage |
| IL | 245 | 3,229.4 | 483 |
| IN | 117 | 2,112.4 | 167 |
| MI | 261 | 2,983.9 | 574 |
| OH | 150 | 1,768.3 | 213 |
| WI | 105 | 1,135.0 | 149 |
| Region | 878 | 11,229.0 | 1,586 |
| U.S. | 7,203 | 81,516.3 | 14,945 |
