Family physicians are the most likely of any physician specialty or subspecialty to practice in rural areas and the most likely to be geographically distributed in the same proportion as the U.S. population, according to a one-page fact sheet published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on Feb. 3.

Within the primary care workforce, 11.1 percent of family physicians practice in large rural areas, compared with 6.7 percent of general internists and 6.2 percent of general pediatricians, according to the data. More than 7 percent of family physicians, meanwhile, practice in small rural areas, compared with 2.4 percent of general internists and 1.8 percent of general pediatricians. In terms of isolated rural frontier areas, 4.2 percent of family physicians practice in these locations, compared with 1.1 percent of general internists and 0.8 percent of pediatricians. The fact sheet is available at http://www.ahrq.gov/research/pcworkforce.htm.