September 2020 reports from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) indicate that more than 81 million Americans lived in a primary care Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA). An HPSA with a primary care shortage is a geographic area, population group, or facility where access to basic healthcare services is substandard because of a lack of primary care providers. This HRSA designation is based upon the number of people living within the HPSA relative to the number of primary care providers that service the area. For its purposes, the HRSA considers "primary care" providers to include Doctors of Medicine (MD) or Doctors of Osteopathy (DO) who provide services as family or general practitioners, general internal medicine physicians, pediatricians, obstetricians or gynecologists. Although the population-to-provider ratio needed to qualify for primary care shortage area 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 limits stipulated by federal regulations. HPSA's receiving a primary care shortage area designation are eligible to participate in federal programs aimed at attracting more primary care services to their communities. The HRSA estimates that, as of September 2020, all primary care HPSAs in the U.S. would need nearly 15,000 more primary care providers to eliminate all such shortage designations.
HPSAs in the four-state Southwest region account for about 15.5% of the U.S. population who live in primary care shortage areas and just under 13.3% of the national shortage of primary care providers. To eliminate these shortages, the HRSA estimates that Southwest region HPSAs would need almost 2,000 additional primary care providers. Here is a summary look at the primary care shortage in the Southwest region of the United States:
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The Primary Care Shortage in the Southwest |
| State | (1) HPSAs | (2) Population | (3) Shortage |
| AZ | 217 | 2,848.6 | 560 |
| NM | 97 | 1,055.8 | 260 |
| OK | 173 | 1,256.9 | 181 |
| TX | 411 | 7,434.5 | 982 |
| Region | 898 | 12,595.8 | 1,983 |
| U.S. | 7,203 | 81,516.3 | 14,945 |
