Where are surgeons practicing across the US, and where are communities facing potential gaps in access to surgical care?
A new interactive tool from the ACS offers a more detailed look at those questions, revealing how the availability of surgeons varies by specialty and geography.
The ACS Surgical Workforce Mapping Tool provides a detailed, data-driven look at the distribution of surgeons across the country. Developed in collaboration with the Program on Health Workforce Research and Policy at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the tool allows users to examine workforce patterns by geography and surgical specialty.
Clinical Congress attendees can get a firsthand look at the new resource in the Education Hub at ACS Central in the Exhibit Hall, where the interactive tool will be available throughout the meeting.
“For a patient, the question is not how many surgeons the country has; it is whether there is one available where they live,” said Thomas C. Tsai, MD, MPH, FACS, Medical Director for Health Policy Research in the ACS Division of Advocacy and Health Policy and a coauthor of the study underlying the tool. “National averages can obscure substantial differences from one community to another. This study highlights a need to assess whether our national health workforce and reimbursement policies are supporting the ability of patients to access the right care at the right time and the right place.”
New Data Reveal Geographic Differences
The tool accompanies a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons that provides a national analysis of surgeon supply across 12 surgical specialties using a single data source.
Researchers identified 201,394 surgeons practicing in the US as of April 2025, equivalent to 59.2 surgeons per 100,000 people. But the national figure looks very different at the local level.
Of the nation's 3,144 counties, 951, or 30%, had no identified surgeon in any of the 12 specialties included in the analysis. Those counties are home to 9.6 million people. An even larger number, 1,180 counties, or 38%, had no identified general surgeon, representing 15.1 million people.
The analysis also found 475 hospitals and surgical facilities in counties without an identified surgeon. Of those facilities, 434 are Critical Access Hospitals, underscoring the overlap between potential surgical workforce gaps and rural healthcare infrastructure.
“The Surgical Workforce Mapping Tool gives policymakers, health systems, and communities a practical tool to understand their local surgical workforce and identify gaps in access to care,” said Erin P. Fraher, PhD, MPP, director of the Carolina Health Workforce Research Center at the UNC Sheps Center and lead author of the study.
Geography Changes the Picture
The study also demonstrates how much the picture can change depending on the geographic scale used to evaluate the workforce.
Although 1,180 counties had no identified general surgeon, every one of the country's 306 Hospital Referral Regions had at least one. These regions encompass larger, multicounty areas based on where patients travel for major surgical care, meaning the presence of a surgeon somewhere within the region does not necessarily mean care is readily available to patients throughout it.
The overall supply of surgeons varied widely among Hospital Referral Regions, from 20.8 surgeons per 100,000 people in Harlingen, Texas, to 250.4 per 100,000 in Rochester, Minnesota.
Differences emerged among specialties as well. General surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, and orthopaedic surgery were among the most widely available specialties, while more specialized fields were more geographically concentrated. Transplant surgery, for example, was absent from 179 of the 306 Hospital Referral Regions.
That variation does not necessarily indicate a workforce problem. Some highly specialized care is deliberately regionalized to concentrate expertise and resources. The researchers emphasize that the appropriate workforce distribution therefore may differ by specialty.
Explore Workforce Patterns
Users of the mapping tool can examine surgeon numbers and rates across counties, Hospital Referral Regions, and metropolitan and micropolitan areas and select individual surgical specialties to see how workforce distribution changes.
The map also allows users to overlay hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, compare geographic areas, and download maps for use in reports and presentations.
The data account for surgeons who report practicing at multiple locations. Rather than assigning each clinician entirely to one location or counting the same surgeon multiple times, the methodology distributes a weighted share across primary and secondary practice sites.
The tool is intended as a starting point for understanding the workforce, rather than a definitive measure of whether a community has sufficient surgical care. It shows where surgeons are located but does not measure surgical volume or capacity, patient travel time, population health needs, or whether individual surgeons practice at particular hospitals.
Those distinctions will be important as policymakers consider investments in graduate medical education, rural surgical training, recruitment and retention, and other approaches to strengthening access to surgical care.
“Mapping the surgical workforce is a starting point for strengthening it,” said Patricia L. Turner, MD, MBA, FACS, Executive Director and CEO of the ACS. “These data can help guide investments in surgical training and support for surgeons in underserved communities, with the goal of improving patients’ access to care.”
The Exhibit Hall is open today from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm.
