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According to , 60% of the areas in the United States that are designated as "medically underserved"—meaning they —are rural. Even more troubling, the average age of rural physicians is older, which means . There has also been a decline in the number of , who historically are more likely than their urban- and suburban-raised peers to practice medicine in rural areas as adults.

Although nearly 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, . According to data from 2018 and 2019 that was released in 2021 by the, nonmetropolitan areas have fewer than half as many physicians per 10,000 people as metropolitan areas. Primary care providers and are in particularly short supply. For nursing shortages, the gap is slightly better, but there are still only seven nurse practitioners per 10,000 people in rural areas.

The lack of primary care physicians in rural populations is particularly troubling. Patients who regularly see a primary care physician tend to over their lifetimes. Additionally, many Americans consider a primary care doctor a trusted source of advice: A reported that rural adults said that their health care provider was the most trustworthy source of information about the COVID-19 vaccine. Four percent of unvaccinated adults said that the reason they weren't vaccinated is that they didn't have a primary care provider.

Data released in 2022 by the Department of Agriculture shows that rural counties are of primary care doctors, dentists, mental health care providers, and even hospitals.

Rural residents are also more likely to have to travel farther to access medical care. A found that rural residents drive 17 minutes on average to the nearest hospital—more than five minutes longer than the average driving times for suburban and urban residents. An extra five minutes might not sound like much, but it can make a big difference in a medical emergency.

When a community has only a few health care providers, those practices end up with a much heavier workload. Research released in 2022 found that more isolated practices with fewer physicians . Practices in urban and suburban settings typically offer —an attractive proposition for new doctors.

Out of 185 rural hospitals that have closed since 2005, . A 2022 study found that contributed to most of these closures. Because rural hospitals typically treat more patients on Medicare and Medicaid, they often receive lower reimbursements than they would for patients with private insurance.

The patient mix in rural hospitals is also frequently older, poorer, and sicker than hospitals in urban or suburban settings.  Making matters worse, when a rural hospital closes, it doesn't just make it more difficult for residents of that community to get medical care—it can also harm the local economy by cutting physician and nursing jobs, as well as dozens of related jobs in the community ranging from food services to cleaning and transportation.

Attracting recent medical school graduates to rural areas is crucial to reducing the rural doctor shortage. However, although most medical schools offered some rural clinical experience, operated a formal rural program in 2019.

offer medical students hands-on experience in communities where a primary care doctor might be the only physician for miles, forcing them to expand their scope of practice to cover specialties like obstetrics. That expanded workload doesn't translate into additional stress: found that rural physicians in South Dakota experienced lower rates of burnout than their peers in cities or suburbs.

Addressing the rural doctor shortage will likely require a combination of several different approaches. Building on the existing rural training programs, the Department of Health and Human Services announced to teaching health centers that focus on providing primary care and mental health care to underserved rural communities.

Creating pre-medical pipeline programs in rural communities can also help high school and college students see themselves entering medicine, which could bolster the rural applicant pool. The within the HRSA also runs several projects aimed at providing better access to telehealth services for rural communities.