Match Day is one of the most visible moments in physician workforce development. It is the day that thousands of graduating medical students learn where they’ll complete their residency training. It’s a milestone worth celebrating. It’s also a powerful opportunity for examining how states are building, sustaining, and investing in their physician pipeline.
This year, Veritas Health Solutions used medical school matriculant data and data published on 2026 Match Day to map the state of medical training capacity across the country, and the picture is more varied, and more interesting, than a single national headline suggests.
Check out our infographic below:
The pipeline begins with medical school enrollment
Our analysis uses 2022 matriculant data (MD and DO) as a proxy for projected 2026 graduates, a methodology that allows for meaningful state-level comparisons even before final graduation counts are available. New York leads the country in projected 2026 medical school graduates, followed by California, Pennsylvania, and Texas, reflecting both population size and deep investment in undergraduate medical education (UME) infrastructure.
It’s also worth noting that U.S. medical school graduates aren’t the only applicants competing for PGY-1 positions. International medical graduates and prior-year applicants vie for the same slots — meaning state-level comparisons of school output to residency capacity are a useful starting point, but don’t fully capture who ultimately fills those seats or where physicians end up practicing.
Not every state’s physician training infrastructure is the same — and that’s okay
One of the most important findings from this analysis is that some states produce far more medical graduates than they have PGY-1 positions to absorb, meaning many of their graduates must train elsewhere. Others have invested heavily in GME without a proportionate medical school presence, creating a training infrastructure that draws in physicians from other states.
And four states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, and Wyoming) had no in-state MD or DO matriculants in 2022, yet all host residency programs and contribute meaningfully to the national training infrastructure. This distinction matters for policy. A state without a medical school still has meaningful levers to expand its physician workforce, through GME expansion, targeted recruitment of out-of-state graduates, loan repayment programs, and pipeline partnerships with programs in other states.
None of these patterns is inherently a problem. But understanding where your state sits in this landscape is essential for designing the right workforce strategies, whether that means expanding GME, growing medical school enrollment, or doubling down on retention programs to keep trained physicians practicing in-state.
Capacity today is not the same as capacity we need
Understanding current training capacity is an important starting point, but it isn’t the same as understanding ideal capacity. How many physicians a state needs depends on population size, age distribution, disease burden, rural-urban geography, and the broader provider mix, among other considerations. Match Day data gives us one important piece of the puzzle; but turning it into actionable workforce strategy requires the fuller picture.
The strategic question: UME, GME, both, other strategies?
Match Day is a useful moment to step back and ask where a state’s training infrastructure is strong, where it has gaps, and where strategic investment is most likely to move the needle. For some states, the priority is expanding GME capacity to retain more of the graduates already being trained within their borders. For others, the opportunity lies upstream, growing UME enrollment to build a larger in-state pipeline over the long term. For many, the more pressing need is a rigorous physician workforce analysis that maps current supply, training capacity, and retention against population health needs before committing to either path.
There is no single formula. But the states that will be best positioned in the years ahead are those that treat physician training not as a fixed feature of their health system, but as a strategic lever, one that can be calibrated to meet the specific needs of their communities.