Annual Report on Findings from the Hawai‘i Physician Workforce Assessment Project

Report to the 2025 Legislature

from Univ of Hawaii, December, 2025

Executive Summary

Hawai‘i Physician Workforce Report 2024 Executive Summary Of the more than 12,000 licensed physicians in Hawaiʻi only 3,672 are currently providing patient care to Hawaiʻi’s population. Further, of those practicing, not all physicians practice full-time, thus these 3,672 individuals provide approximately 3,075 Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) of active patient care. These numbers are 73 individual providers and 55 FTEs more than in 2024. The demand model used to estimate how many physicians are needed is based on the US average utilization of physician services by specialty as applied to the demographic characteristics and health risk factors of each of Hawaiʻi’s four counties. Adaptations for geographic barriers and time sensitive coverage needs were made for practitioners of Emergency Medicine, Critical Care, Orthopedic Surgery, Urologic Surgery, Cardiothoracic Surgery, Vascular Surgery, Neurologic Surgery, and Psychiatry. The demand model indicates the State of Hawaiʻi needs 3,618 FTEs of practicing physicians, indicating a statewide shortage of 543 FTEs of physician services. However, when the geographic realities of specialty coverage on different islands are addressed, the unmet need for physicians equals 768 FTEs statewide.

The greatest statewide shortage remains in primary care, with 152 FTEs needed in total across all islands. The greatest subspecialty statewide shortages include Pediatric Gastroenterology, Pediatric and Adult Endocrinology, Pediatric and Adult Pulmonology, Colorectal Surgery and Thoracic Surgery.

Activities pursued by the Physician Workforce team coordinated by our Area Health Education Center (AHEC) to increase the physician population include ongoing recruitment of physicians to Hawaiʻi through recruitment booths at national conferences, regularly updated job board at AHEC.hawaii.edu; maintaining the workforce database and providing presentations as requested throughout the state; providing continuing education including the Hawaiʻi Health Workforce Summit (784 participants in 2024) and Project ECHO (658 people received 4,980 people-hours of case-based education in 2023); starting up the new Governor supported $30,000,000 Hawaiʻi Healthcare Education Loan Repayment Program (HELP) by funding loan repayment for 800 individuals; supporting legislative efforts to exempt clinicians from the General Excise Tax on public insurances (double tax on private practices); supporting neighbor island clinical teaching, travel, lodging, community activities and recruitment of health careerfocused learners; assisting with administering the Hawaiʻi Preceptor Tax Credit; and mentoring young physicians. Activities introduced in 2024 include supporting lobbying efforts in Washington DC to increase Medicare reimbursement rates and continuing working groups in five areas identified as important to building the workforce: administrative simplification; increasing revenue/pay; incentivizing healthy patient behavior; and electronic health record/telehealth.

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