The state gained 97 doctors last year, up from four the previous year, reversing a growing workforce shortage.

Still, Hawaii is short about 500 doctors, down from a shortage of 600 in 2015, according to the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine.

“The good news is it’s getting better, but we’re still a long way from where we need to be,” said Dr. Kelley Withy, director of the UH Area Health Education Center, which conducted the survey. “It’s still a crisis, especially on the neighbor islands.”

The largest shortfall is on Oahu, but it is more severe on the neighbor islands because there are fewer physicians per capita, she said. The greatest overall need is for primary care doctors. Hawaii has 2,900 full-time doctors caring for patients, the survey shows.

The Hawaii Physician Workforce Assessment reviews newly issued physician licenses and tallies the number of doctors retiring every year. The revised annual survey for the first time took into account a team-based model of care driven by the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The latest study was released last weekend at a conference aimed at finding new ways of recruiting doctors.

One of the ways health care providers are addressing the shortage is by working together to help recruit doctors to Hawaii. The state’s major medical groups and hospitals including the Queen’s Health Systems, Kaiser Permanente and Hawaii Pacific Health meet monthly to discuss recruitment strategies, Withy said.

In addition, the UH medical school advertises all open positions statewide on its website at ahec.hawaii.edu and uses a national repository that shows which doctors are interested in working in Hawaii’s underserved areas, she said.

The Area Health Education Center has also expanded a loan repayment program that distributes up to $30,000 per doctor per year for those who work in underserved areas. The program has funded 24 doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and psychologists since starting in 2012.

“The good news is that use of telehealth has increased from 2 percent to 15 percent over the last two years. It’s exciting that we’re increasing the medical school class size and increasing our recruitment programs for future students,” Withy said, adding that the medical school would need to train 150 students a year — up from 72 today — to meet Hawaii’s medical needs. “Therefore we have to recruit from elsewhere as well as train our own. We are doing a better job at recruiting, although not good enough.”