Podiatrist Distribution in the US

Purpose: Foot and ankle care is important for maintaining the mobility of an ever increasingly aging population. However, little is known about the availability and distribution of podiatrists in the nation. This paper describes the podiatrist distribution and compare that to the distribution of primary care physicians in the nation.

Data and Method: We used the 2009 Area Resource File to assess the growth of podiatrists and describe their geographic distribution across rural urban continuum. We then compare podiatrist distribution to that of primary care physicians.

Results: Preliminary results shows the number of podiatrists in the nation nearly doubled in size from 1980 to 2008 reaching 15,000. However, there are significant concentration in the urban core. The supply of podiatrists decreased from 4.05 per 100,000 population to just 0.36 per 100,000 with increasing rurality in 2008 (national average is 2.22 per 100,000 population). However, primary care physicians, in particular family physicians, are more evenly distributed and more available than podiatrists with a national average of 27.84 per 100,000 population (2008 data) across the rural-urban continuum.

Implications: Podiatrists has grown fastest in the past decade as this field shapes into a larger medical specialty. Our findings makes it clear that podiatrists will not meet increasing need of an ever increasingly aging population. Other health care providers must be involved in providing podiatric care. As family physicians are the most evenly distributed physician workforce in the nation, many rural and underserved communities depend on FPs for delivering podiatric care.