Which Countries do most IMGs in US come from ?

A 2006 American Medical Association Discussion paper on IMGs called the "International Medical Graduates in the U.S. Workforce" did a pretty good study on the IMG distributions and other workforce data.


Here are some interesting facts that the paper presents :

1. As of 2006, IMGs came from 127 Countries !

2. IMGs constituted 185,234 physicians out of a total of 794,893 in USA

3. 44% IMGs worked in the Area of Primary Care

4. And here are the Top-10 Countries that most IMGs came from =

i. India : 24%
ii. Phillipines : 10.6%
iii. Mexico : 6.7%
iv. Pakistan: 5.7%
v. Dominican Republic: 3.8%
vi. Russia: 2.9%
vii. Grenada: 2.8%
ix. Egypt: 2.6%
x. South Korea: 2.5%


Interestingly Iran makes about 2.3% of the IMG population (12th on the Top-20 IMG countries list) despite Iran being a restricted area for taking the USMLEs or applying for exam visas. I had a reader ask me how could an Iranian IMG go about USMLEs and Residencies - I have yet to work on finding that out. I would appreciate any comments on that issue.

Another interesting thing is that while the Billion-plus populated India makes the most IMGs, its Billion-plus populated neighbor, China, ranks 11th. Pathology has a pretty good Chinese IMG population, but overall their volumes have stayed low on the clinical side.

With a big physician shortage projected in the United States, IMGs will continue to play a big role in America health care arena.


Data Source: International Medical Graduates in the U.S.


You also might wanna check out this interactive map-based plot showing countries that IMGs typically come from, comparing patterns over year and also includes the top-10 medical schools supplying IMGs in USA


Workforce: April 2006 AMA Discussion Paper [pdf]





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