Report Ranks California the 14th Best State for Physicians

California, which has the most doctors of any state in the U.S., ranks as the 14th best state for physicians based on several metrics, including wages and job opportunities, according to a new WalletHub report, HCPLive's "Physician's Money Digest" reports (Kaltwasser, HCP Live's "Physician's Money Digest," 3/30).

For the report, all of the states and Washington, D.C., were rated on 12 metrics sorted into two categories:

• Environment, or risks of the job, such as state medical board penalties, malpractice payouts and costs of malpractice insurance; and
• Job opportunity and competition.

Data for the report were taken from:

• Citizen.org;
• Diederich Healthcare;
• HHS;
• The Missouri Economic Research & Information Center;
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; and
• The U.S. Census Bureau.

Findings

Based on those categories, South Carolina ranked as the top state overall for doctors and Rhode Island ranked last.

California -- which has more than 100,000 doctors -- ranked:

• 14th overall;
• Eighth for work environment; and
• 25th for opportunities and competition (Kiernan, WalletHub report, March 2015).

Comments

In the report, Emily Dow, CMO of UC-Irvine Health's Family Health Center and a professor at the UC-Irvine School of Medicine, wrote that states can attract more primary care physicians by "promot[ing] primary care as the bedrock of health and wellness."

Dow added, "Having an adequate supply of primary care physicians should not just be a local issue, but a national policy so that everyone has access to primary care no matter where you live" (Beth Hensley, WTOP, 3/30).