At the request of the Community Hospital Education Council of Florida, this study was performed to assist the Council in its function of helping to provide a continuing supply of highly trained physicians, in the appropriate specialities, in the communities where they are needed. The objective of the study was to conduct an accurate inventory, by specialty, of physicians in active practice in Florida and to identify gaps in the supply and distribution of physicians. The inventory was compared first with the physician staffing patterns of several major group health plans, ratios that have frequently been used for comparison with the number of practitioners in certain populations. This comparison developed an "excess" of physicians in primary care and in most specialities for the state. Such a finding is markedly inconsistent with the availability of physicians that actually pertains in Florida today. Under the conclusion that the group health plan ratios do not apply to the system by which health care and physicians' services are delivered to Floridians at this time, the author of this report has developed a set of recommended baseline physician ratios and has compared the inventory with those. Related tables are included in the appendices. (Author)