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Medical specialties have unique supply and demand factors and face different obstacles in meeting demand. Overall, the specialties that can score Medicare-funded residency slots tend to produce more physicians and stand a better chance at meeting demand.

Nursing, which is projected to have among the highest shortages by 2025, is often plagued by but does not have as much funding support as other areas of medicine. Many nursing schools don't have enough faculty or access to clinical sites to accept the number of applicants they receive annually. Pay incentives are further driving this issue; most nurses qualified to teach can earn much more working in a hospital setting. Nurses have also reported from patients.

The American Hospital Association recommends the federal government invest more money in nursing schools and salaries and put forth federal protections against violence in order to bolster the workforce and slow the stream of nurses leaving the profession.

Lack of proper health care and good hospitals exacerbates access issues that the roughly already face. Even before the pandemic, almost a quarter of rural Americans reported .

Additionally, people in rural communities tend to be older, less affluent, and underinsured relative to those in larger metro areas, and thus their heightened need for medical care collides with equally heightened financial challenges. Compounding the issue is the fact that rural medical facilities cannot generally afford to pay medical staff the salary they could expect in denser urban settings, which in turn has .

Most doctors practice at the location of their residency or within their resident facility's network, and most government-funded residencies are in urban medical centers. One result of this is so-called in many rural communities. The reported in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, that three of every five federally designated health professional shortage areas were rural. As of July 2023, the Health Resources & Services Administration found that health professional shortage areas continue to be in rural areas than urban ones.

Factors such as state population, geography, state-level policy, technology, and models of care all present varying landscapes for patients seeking care. Regionally, the . On a state level, California, Florida, and Texas are expected to experience the largest physician shortages, due in part to their anticipated population growth.

State-level solutions to address and reverse the shortages in medical roles across the U.S. largely focus on looser licensure and financial incentives. , which bloomed during the pandemic as a means of assisting physicians with telehealth work under the auspices of the , could mitigate shortages in some regions of the country. As of July 2023, 39 states and the District of Columbia are participating in the compact.

Some states have strategized to help relieve student loan debt in response to the shortages. Illinois, for example, for nurses and physicians who agree to work in designated shortage areas in the state for up to four years.

Federal investment in the state shortages also plays a key role in addressing the shortages. In December 2020, for Medicare-supported graduate medical education, appropriating funds to create 1,000 such positions over a five-year period in hospitals training residents over their cap or in states with new medical schools, teaching hospitals in rural areas, and hospitals that care for underserved communities. The following year, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act was introduced, which would add 14,000 residency positions over seven years. The act was and is pending Congressional approval.

Data reporting by Emilia Ruzicka. Story editing by Brian Budzynski. Copy editing by Tim Bruns. Photo selection by Clarese Moller.