Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) data as of March 31, 2025, indicated that over 59.7 million Americans lived in communities designated as a dental health HPSA (health professional shortage area).  A dental health HPSA is a population group, geographic area, or facility where access to dental care suffers from too few dentists serving the community relative to the size of its population.  As of 3/31/25, HRSA designated dental care shortfall areas in the five-state Great Lakes region totaled almost 7.3 million residents.  In order to remove that dental care shortfall designation, the HRSA estimates that HPSAs in the Great Lakes states would need 1,323 more dentists serving their communities.  A deeper look at HRSA data provides the following state-level summary view of the dental care shortfall in the Great Lakes region:

The Dental Care Shortfall in the Great Lakes Region

State	(1) HPSAs	(2) Population	(3) Shortfall
IL	227	2,134,589	408
IN	124	976,210	164
MI	242	1,582,942	297
OH	162	1,717,141	289
WI	161	867,585	165
Region	916	7,278,467	1,323
U.S.	7,054	59,718,174	10,143

(1) Designated Geographic, Population Group, and Facility HPSAs with a dental care shortfall

(2) Population of designated HPSAs

(3) Dental Care practitioners needed to remove HPSA Designation

Source:  Designated HPSA Quarterly Summary, 3/31/25 (HRSA)

Family Medicine Physician Pay in the Great Lakes Region

Information published recently by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) put the number of family medicine physicians employed in the United States at more than 104,000 as of May 2024.  Almost 10,000 family medicine physicians were employed at that time in the five-state Great Lakes region.  BLS data reveals the region to have much disparity in family physician pay.  Indiana and Wisconsin are both top ten states nationally for family medicine physician annual mean wages.  However, more than 70% of Great Lakes region family medicine physicians live in other states in the region, all of which register family physician annual mean wage levels below the national average.  A closer examination of May 2024 data from the BLS details the following about family medicine physician pay in the Great Lakes region:

Family Medicine Physician Pay in the Great Lakes Region

State	# Employed	Annual Mean Wages	Wage Rank*
IL	1,540	$206,010	48th
IN	1,700	$295,310	5th
MI	4,400	$222,500	41st
OH	1,780	$230,400	36th
WI	1,510	$293,630	6th
U.S.	98,590	$214,370	-------

(*) annual mean wage ranking among the 50 states and the District of Columbia

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OES. Data extracted on July 3, 2025