What Is a Geriatrician? US, UK and Canada Shortages Compared

A geriatrician is a doctor trained specifically in the medical care of older people. In the United States, fewer than four in ten training places for the specialty were filled in the 2025 national match.¹ The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), which runs that match, offered 388 geriatric medicine fellowship positions and reported a fill rate of 38.9%.

This article explains what a geriatrician does, how many there are in five countries, and why the international numbers are less solid than they look.

What a geriatrician does that a family doctor does not

A geriatrician is a physician. A gerontologist is not necessarily one. Cleveland Clinic describes a geriatrician as one kind of gerontologist, the wider group of professionals who support older adults' health.² Only the geriatrician is a doctor who diagnoses and prescribes.

Cleveland Clinic lists the patients who benefit most. They include people with several chronic conditions, people taking many medicines, and people with memory problems or a recent hospital stay. Most patients start after 65, especially after 75.

The British Geriatrics Society (BGS) describes its members as experts in frailty, multiple long-term conditions and end-of-life care.³ In the UK they work in hospitals, community services, primary care and care homes.

The training differs by country, which matters when comparing headcounts:

How many there are, country by country

United States. The American Geriatrics Society counts roughly 7,000 board-certified geriatricians, as reported by the Association of Health Care Journalists in July 2026.⁵ The Census Bureau put the population aged 65 and over at 61.2 million in 2024.¹⁰ Dividing one by the other gives about 1.1 geriatricians per 10,000 older Americans. Board certification does not prove a doctor still practises geriatrics, so the working number is probably lower.

A wider US measure exists. America's Health Rankings counts 41.5 geriatric clinicians per 100,000 adults aged 65 and over in September 2025.¹¹ That figure includes nurse practitioners, so it is not comparable with the physician counts below.

United Kingdom. The 2022 census of consultant physicians counted 2,328 consultant geriatricians, according to the BGS.⁶ For the first time since 2016, geriatric medicine was the largest medical specialty. That works out to one consultant geriatrician for every 697 people aged 85 and over. The BGS target is one per 500, and it estimates 1,786 more are needed by 2030.

Canada. A 2021 study in the Canadian Geriatrics Journal counted 376 geriatricians in 2019, up from 276 in 2011.⁷ The authors use a benchmark of 1.25 per 10,000 people aged 65 and over. They found growth "did not keep pace" with the older population. A report by Foundation Health put Canada at 5.7 per 100,000 seniors in September 2025.¹² That is 0.57 per 10,000, under half the benchmark.

Germany and France. The same Foundation Health report puts Germany at about 19.0 per 100,000 seniors and France at 17.4. It does not say which year or which register those figures come from. In Germany, 3,124 doctors with the geriatrics add-on qualification were working at the end of 2022, as reported by the careers site PraktischArzt from the national physician statistics.⁹

Belgium. Belgium's Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE) counted 377 practising geriatricians in 2021, or 1.66 per 10,000 people aged 65 and over.⁸

What the headline numbers leave out

There is no official international dataset for this. The KCE says so directly: "No OECD data are available."⁸ Both of its reports rely on one 2017 review covering the G7, which gave a range from 0.4 per 10,000 in Canada to 2.4 in the UK.

The same review produced two different verdicts on Belgium. The KCE's 2019 report said Belgium "has the lowest geriatrician workforce" compared with the G7, at 0.3 per 10,000.¹³ Yet its own table in that report counted 296 practising geriatricians in 2016. The 2024 edition put the 2016 rate at 1.41 and called Belgium "average" among the same countries.⁸ Same country, same comparison set, a fivefold difference.

The UK figures disagree too. The 2017 review gave the UK 2.4 per 10,000. Foundation Health gives 1.83, although the UK's consultant headcount has grown since.¹² The likeliest reasons are different years and different definitions of who counts, such as whether trainees are included. Neither source says.

Both sources agree on the direction. The UK is well ahead of Canada in each, and Canada sits far below its own benchmark.

The US training pipeline is the steadiest number here, because the NRMP publishes it every year. The geriatric medicine fill rate was 43.1% in 2022 and 41.5% in 2023.¹⁴ It fell to 38.9% in 2025, against 85.7% across all the medicine and paediatric specialties in that match.¹

Even that has a rival figure. The Association of Health Care Journalists cites a 2025 paper putting the 2022–23 fill rate at around 70%.⁵ Its article does not say how that paper counted. The NRMP figure covers only places filled through its own match.

How to use these numbers

Do not judge a health system from a league table. The tables disagree with each other. In Belgium and Germany a geriatrician is mainly a hospital doctor, so the headcount says little about who sees older patients at home.

Ask the family doctor for a geriatrician referral early, and give the reasons Cleveland Clinic lists: several chronic conditions, a long medicine list, memory changes, or a recent hospital stay.² In the US, check that the doctor is board-certified in geriatric medicine, and ask about the wait before you book.