Max Mello
Director of Physician & APP Recruitment
Healthcare Recruiting · Boston, MA
Physician, PA & NP recruiting in Boston, grounded in the metro's real numbers.
We track the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area from federal data that updates every month, the same numbers we use when we take a search. Here is the current picture, and what it means if you are hiring.
Provider supply
Who practices in Boston today
Individual providers with an active practice address in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area, from the federal NPI registry (June 2026).
28,902
Physicians
9,236
Nurse practitioners
3,846
Physician assistants
Over the last 12 months, the Boston metro added 407 newly enrolled nurse practitioners, 210 physicians, and 195 physician assistants to the registry. New NP enrollments outpaced new physicians: the advanced-practice workforce is growing faster than the physician base, and hiring plans that ignore that mix are competing for the scarcer pool.
Source: CMS NPPES registry, June 2026. Scope: Massachusetts side of the Boston metro area.
Demand
What the local employer market looks like
Federal quarterly employment data for Boston-area healthcare employers.
Hospitals
147,686 employed, down 3.2% year over year. Average wages up 7.9% over the same period.
Ambulatory care
135,338 employed across 7,981 sites.
Source: BLS QCEW county files, private ownership, Q4 2024 vs Q4 2025.
Occupation-level wages are published at state level (see the parent state page); metro wage signal = QCEW average weekly wages above. See Massachusetts pay ranges →
Shortage pressure
37 federally designated primary care shortage areas in the Boston area.
0 of them score in the high-need range. If your facility sits in or near one, you are not imagining it: the supply math is against you. That is the search we run every day.
Source: HRSA HPSA primary care detail file.
Tell us about the opening
Hiring in Boston?
Tell us about the role. We'll give you an honest read on the local market for it: who's movable, what they expect, and a realistic timeline.