COVID-19 placed unprecedented strain on the health workforce. Early in the pandemic, providers faced a novel, highly infectious pathogen, and while some areas experienced increased health care demands, others saw limits in nonessential services and decreased patient visits, leading to financial pressures and layoffs.

This Health Affairs Scholar article explores the use of the publicly available Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS) and Doctors and Clinicians datasets to examine physician and advanced-practice clinician movement through the COVID-19 pandemic. Both datasets are updated on a regular basis, allowing closer to “real time” assessment of provider movement.