Physicians Per Capita in the USA

This really doesn't have much to do with personal finance.   I just found it interesting.

This slide at the Kaiser Foundation shows the number of doctors per 100,000 people over the past 40 years.

The number of physicians per capita has done nothing but go up since 1970.  In fact in the last 10 years alone the number went up 20%.   The number of doctors per capita more than doubled from 1970 to 2008.   In 1970 there were 146 doctors per 100,000 people and by 2008 it hit 322 per 100k.  

Doctors per capita figures vary a lot from state to state.   In another Kaiser page you can see that the number of doctors per capita by state varies considerably. 

The staff levels in hospitals has been pretty flat really with some variation.  Kaiser also has a slide showing the number of employees per admissions from 1980 to 2008.