Original data research from PlainHealthAccess. Each page is calculated from a source-vintaged HRSA dataset and states what the underlying designation records can and cannot establish.
PlainHealthAccess ranks US states and territories by total Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) designations across all three discipline tracks, primary care, mental health, and dental, using the portal's stated HRSA source vintage.
PlainHealthAccess ranks US states by the total population residing in at least one HRSA-designated health professional shortage area in the portal's stated HRSA source vintage.
PlainHealthAccess ranks US counties carrying an HRSA Medically Underserved Area (MUA) designation in the portal's stated HRSA source vintage, sorted by total county population.
PlainHealthAccess ranks states by the number of primary-care clinicians needed to clear every HRSA shortage designation, then sets that gap against the mental-health gap. Providers needed is the additive, non-overlapping measure of the workforce hole.
Most HRSA shortage designations are facility and population-group types, not whole-area geographic ones. That single fact explains why the share of residents in a geographic shortage area varies so much by state, and why some states honestly show 0%.
Which states have the most HRSA-designated Medically Underserved Areas? A designation-count ranking, plus a separate severity ranking by average Index of Medical Underservice among states with 5+ designations.
Download the HRSA shortage-designation extract cited on this page: hrsa-shortage-designations.csv or the JSON distribution (CC BY 4.0). Method notes live on /methodology and /data.
What to do with this research
Each ranking above answers a single comparison question; use these to check your own state or county, or to run a household-level estimate.
These are original rankings calculated from HRSA designation records; each linked research page states its own data limits.
Every figure on PlainHealthAccess is rendered directly from HRSA source data, figures are sourced from HRSA publications and verified against primary sources. This hub lists PlainHealthAccess research pages calculated from source-vintaged HRSA designation files. Each linked article states its own ranking task and data limits. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, review the public data changelog, or report a data issue for this page. Data current as of 2026.