Introduction

"How many physicians do I need?" ranks among the most frequent questions we receive from members through AskAdvisory. Our Clinician Supply Profiler offers a strong starting point. However, ensuring adequate primary and specialty care coverage requires going beyond population-based needs assessments. Clinical leaders and planners must understand a range of nuances across the workforce, population, competitors, and patient utilization patterns. We recommend two analyses for physician network planning: risk-adjusted panel size and downstream utilization for primary care, and market-contextualized leakage for specialty care.