Recommended Citation: Qian (Eric) Luo, Yoon Hong Park, Mandar Bodas, Anushree Vichare, Patricia Pittman. U.S. Medicaid Primary Care Workforce Tracker. Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity. Washington, DC: George Washington University, 2025. https://gwhwi.org/medicaid-primary-care-workforce-tracker.html
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Medicaid Primary Care Workforce Tracker
About the Tracker
The Medicaid Primary Care Workforce Tracker is an interactive map that allows you to examine and visualize the primary care workforce providing health care to individuals with Medicaid. The Tracker uses:
- Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) to identify primary care clinicians who saw Medicaid beneficiaries each year. T-MSIS collects Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) data from U.S. states, territories, and D.C., including fee-for-service and managed care plan data.
- National Plan & Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) to identify clinician profession/specialty and non-Medicaid providers.
- Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership (PECOS) and Doctors and Clinicians, along with NPPES to identify “Likely Active” providers – those active in Medicare (Doctors and Clinicians) or with update activity in NPPES or PECOS.
Request the Data
If you would like access to the database for your own analysis, please submit a request.
Limitations
- T-MSIS Data Quality. While T-MSIS is the most comprehensive national Medicaid database, it has known data quality challenges. States with data quality issues are presented in gray in the Tracker and excluded from state and county rankings. T-MSIS data quality is discussed further in the Data & Methods.
- NPPES Data Quality. Accuracy of specialty designations is a known challenge, particularly for Advanced Practice Nurses and Physician Assistants who are less likely to identify a specialty. Our estimates likely overcount the number of Advanced Practice Clinicians in primary care.
- Number of Providers per Medicaid Population. As this measure uses Medicaid population as the denominator, the population will vary based on state policies (e.g., Medicaid eligibility and expansion). Variation in annual population estimates can also affect the measure year to year, particularly for smaller counties. We also note that Medicaid providers likely do not solely care for Medicaid beneficiaries. Therefore, this measure cannot be directly compared to other provider to population ratios.