Auto-Generate Physician Numbers within Tables

When we add new providers to our system, within registration the phys number will auto generate when users select "new." When going into tables>clinical>physician>new the physician number is a free text area. Would be nice to set this up to auto generate the next available physician number. Currently support is saying that we need to filter our physician table by number so we can "hunt" for the next number that can be used. This is very frustrating and time consuming. Would be great if it could auto generate.