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Oregon's Licensed Health Care Workforce

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This dashboard presents supply trends, demographics, and practice patterns of licensed health care professionals in Oregon. It includes data from over 200,000 providers in more than 35 occupations across 17 licensing boards. 

The Health Care Workforce Reporting Program (HWRP) partners with licensing boards to collect these data during the license renewal process to inform policy decision making and educational investments. 

Learn more on the HWRP main webpage

Dashboard

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Use the dropdown filters to modify the data. Learn what the filter options mean under "Filters and Terminology" below.


Filters and Terminology


These pages show the number of health care professionals who are licensed to work in Oregon and who report actively practicing under their license. You can also view the estimated equivalent number of professionals practicing full-time in direct patient care ("Direct patient care FTE"). These estimates provide a more nuanced picture of the supply of health care workers providing patient care in Oregon than just the number of licensed providers. 

Discipline: Discipline is a grouping of related professions working in a specific aspect of healthcare. For example, the dentistry discipline contains both dentists and dental hygienists. Selecting a discipline will show only related occupations in the associated occupation list.

Clinical focus area: Clinical focus areas are groups of providers based on license type and provider specialty. Some clinical focus area data is unavailable for all years. Specific profession and specialty data is not available before 2020. 
  • Primary care professionals include physicians and physician assistants who specialize in family practice, general practice, geriatric medicine, pediatrics, adolescent medicine, internal medicine, or obstetrics and gynecology; nurse practitioners who specialize in family practice, geriatrics, pediatrics, internal medicine, or obstetrics/gynecology/women’s health; and naturopathic physicians who specialize in family medicine, pediatrics, geriatrics or obstetrics. 
  • Behavioral health professionals include all psychologists, counselors and therapists, licensed clinical social workers, and clinical social work associates; physicians and physician assistants who specialize in psychiatry (addiction, neurology, child, adolescent, geriatric, or forensic) or psychoanalysis; nurse practitioners who specialize in psychiatry/mental health; and naturopathic physicians who specialize in mental health. 
  • Primary oral health professionals include dentists who specialize in general dentistry, pediatric dentistry or public health; and expanded practice dental hygienists who specialize in general dentistry, pediatric dentistry or public health and who report holding an expanded practice permit. 
  • Maternal health professionals include physicians and physician assistants who specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, neonatology/perinatal or maternal and fetal medicine. Also included are primary care physicians and physician assistants who answer a subsequent question saying they provide maternal child health in their practice (important for rural communities where primary care physicians provide the bulk of maternity care); nurse practitioners who specialize in maternal-child health, obstetrics/gynecology/women’s health and naturopathic physicians who specialize in obstetrics. 
  • Pediatric and geriatric care professionals are subgroups of primary care professionals and include nurse practitioners and naturopathic physicians who specialize in pediatrics or geriatrics respectively, as well as physicians and physician assistants who report any of the primary care specialties in addition to acknowledging in subsequent questions that they provide pediatric or geriatric services. 

Number of estimated active professionals: Estimated by multiplying the total number of licensed professionals in Oregon by the active practice rate. The active practice rate is the percentage of licensed professionals who report actively practicing in Oregon. We assume that new licensees practice at the same rate as renewing licensees. 

Full time equivalent or FTE: Because not all professionals work full-time (40 hours/week), the equivalent number of professionals available full-time for each occupation is estimated by multiplying the number of estimated practicing professionals by average FTE for occupation. FTE is calculated based on the total hours worked per week for each licensee and then averaged over all active licensees in the occupation. 

Direct patient care FTE of professionals: Because professionals do not spend all of their time in direct patient care, the equivalent number of professionals providing full-time direct patient care is estimated by multiplying the number of estimated practicing professionals by the average direct patient care FTE for the occupation. Average direct patient care FTE is calculated based on the total hours worked per week for each licensee and percent of time reported in direct patient care and then averaged over all active licensees in the occupation. 

Population-to-provider ratios: Estimated by dividing the total number of individuals in the population at the county level by direct patient care FTE in the same area, adjusted to a population of 100,000. Direct patient care FTE in the county is estimated based on direct patient care FTE at the statewide level and the number of active professionals practicing in the county.

This page shows a selection of the demographic information collected by the HWRP survey, filterable by discipline and occupation. There are side-by-side presentations to allow the user to compare between different disciplines, occupations, or compared with the whole workforce. 

Discipline: Discipline is a grouping of related professions working in a specific aspect of healthcare. For example, the Dentistry discipline contains both Dentists and Dental Hygienists. Selecting a discipline will show only related occupations in the associated occupation list. 

Occupation: Occupation is a grouping of providers based on the professional license type held in Oregon. A full listing of associated license types and administering boards can be found here: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HPA/ANALYTICS/HealthCareWorkforceReporting/HWRP-Program-Description.pdf 

Race/ethnicity: Race and ethnicity were collected and analyzed using REALD procedures and methodology, as outlined in the 2020 REALD Implementation Guide. Survey respondents were first asked an open-response question about how they identify their race, ethnicity, and tribal affiliation. Respondents then selected all that apply from a list of 41 racial or ethnic subgroups. If a respondent only selected one subgroup, the respondent was assigned to that race or ethnicity subgroup for data analysis. If the respondent selected more than one subgroup, the respondent could indicate if they thought of one subgroup as their primary racial or ethnic identity and they were assigned to the indicated primary race or ethnicity subgroup for analysis. If the respondent did not indicate a primary racial or ethnic identity but selected multiple race or ethnicity subgroups, the race or ethnicity subgroup was assigned using the “rarest race first” methodology as described on page 94 of the REALD Implementation Guide. 

Gender: The HWRP survey currently has one question about gender, with response options of Female, Male, Prefer to self-describe, and Don’t want to answer/decline. Respondents who choose to self-describe have the option of entering an open text description of their gender.

While this chart displays responses to a question about gender, only binary sex response options were provided. Since sex and gender were combined, these responses do not capture many gender experiences. Some people with minority gender identities may have had their genders inaccurately recorded as "female" or "male." Open text descriptions predominantly included gender identities. 

Of those choosing to self-describe (0.56 percent, n=740), the frequently reported self-descriptions included: non-binary (43.6 percent), transgender (5.2 percent), genderqueer (6.1 percent) and genderfluid (3.4 percent). 

Disabilities: Survey respondents were asked if they experience functional difficulties, including a physical, mental, or emotional condition that limits their activities in any way; difficulty hearing; seeing; mobility (walking or climbing stairs); self-care (dressing or bathing); or independent living (doing errands alone). The measure presented here reports what percentage of individuals out of the selected population report from zero to six of these functional difficulty areas. 

Disability data collected by the Oregon Medical Board does not match the question set for other boards, and will appear blank on this display. 

For general information about demographic data collection in HWRP, please see our report on The Diversity of Oregon's Licensed Health Care Workforce.

This page shows practice patterns of actively practicing providers. The line graphs about hours worked show changes over time. The bar graphs show percentages in 2024. 

Discipline: Discipline is a grouping of related professions working in a specific aspect of healthcare. For example, the Dentistry discipline contains both Dentists and Dental Hygienists. Selecting a discipline will show only related occupations in the associated occupation list. 

Occupation: Occupation is a grouping of providers based on the professional license type held in Oregon. A full listing of associated license types and administering boards can be found here: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HPA/ANALYTICS/HealthCareWorkforceReporting/HWRP-Program-Description.pdf 

Average hours worked per week: Reported maximum hours is capped at 80 for individuals. 

Worked over 40 hours weekly: This is the calculated percentage of all licensees who have reported working more than 40 hours per week. 

Years licensed in Oregon: Years since the provider first obtained their license of this type in Oregon. 

How providers spend their time: The distribution of reported time by activity between direct patient care, management/admin, research, teaching and other tasks. 

Future Plans: Reported plans for what providers will do in the next two years of their practice. Top Practice Settings: Reported practice setting type for the first two practice locations reported by each provider. Survey options vary by occupation. Top Specialty Areas: Reported areas of practice specialty in the first two practice locations reported by each provider. Survey options vary by occupation.​

Top Practice Settings: Reported practice setting type for the first two practice locations reported by each provider. Survey options vary by occupation. 

Top Specialty Areas: Reported areas of practice specialty in the first two practice locations reported by each provider. Survey options vary by occupation.

About the Data

The Health Care Workforce Reporting Program (HWRP) collects workforce-related information directly from health care professionals via a questionnaire embedded in the license renewal process. Health care professionals with completed surveys during this time period and an active license in January of each reporting year (2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) were included in these interactive displays.

HWRP data is considered full count data. This dashboard focuses on reporting data as estimates or reporting percentages of a whole and does not suppress data for small numbers. Portions of the dashboard containing sensitive information like demographics use only percentage reporting which minimizes the likelihood of individual re-identification.​

Please visit our website for more information, static reports, additional Oregon workforce resources, data access and methodology: https://www.oregon.gov/OHA/HPA/ANALYTICS/Pages/Health-Care-Workforce-Reporting.aspx 

For questions about this data display, contact: 
Health Care Workforce Reporting Program 
Research and Data 
Office of Health Analytics 
Oregon Health Authority 
971-283-8792 


For questions on how we use REALD race and ethnicity data, please see our report on The Diversity of Oregon's Licensed Health Care Workforce​.

General Information

You can get data from this display in other languages, large print, braille, or a format you prefer. Email wkfc.admin@oha.oregon.gov.​

Health Care Workforce Reporting Program. (2024). Oregon’s health care workforce: Supply and profiles. Interactive display accessed [MM/DD/YYYY]. Portland, OR: Oregon Health Authority. https://www.oregon.gov/oha/HPA/ANALYTICS/Pages/HWRP-dashboard.aspx​

If you need additional data or analysis than what is presented in this dashboard, visit the Health Analytics Data Request​ page. 

You can also explore other dashboards​ produced by the Office of Health Analytics​