When you need medical care, the last thing you want to do is wait. For many people in the Quad Cities trying to find a new primary care physician, that’s exactly what they have to do. A 2014 study by Merritt Hawkins, a healthcare consulting firm, showed the average person in the U.S. waited about 19 days for an appointment when looking for a new doctor. So what’s the issue? If you have an urgent medical issue, you can always to go the emergency room. If you come down with the flu or a minor illness, you can always head to convenient care or a minute clinic. However, for some people, establishing care with a family doctor simply can’t wait. If you need a prescription that’s non-emergency, like a child with Attention Deficit Disorder or a parent with chronic pain, you can’t wait a full month to see a doctor because your prescription will likely run out. A 2016 study by Avalere Healthcare and the Consumer Healthcare Products Association crunched the numbers on America’s primary care physician shortage. The study shows Illinois has 229 shortage areas, including here in the Quad Cities. Iowa is lower at 119 shortage areas, but both states are still on the higher end of the national spectrum. “1 in 6 American families has a hard time seeing a primary care doctor, and if you look at Illinois and Iowa, it’s even worse. In Iowa, it’s about 1 in 5 families there’s a doctor shortage for primary care physicians and in Illinois, 1 in 4,” said David Spangler, Senior Vice President of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. We looked at the process of finding a new doctor at two major QC healthcare groups: UnityPoint Trinity and Genesis Health System. At UnityPoint, you can look up doctors online but it doesn’t show who’s taking new patients, so we called the My Nurse helpline. The nurse on the other end gave us some physician referrals, but when we called, those doctors said they weren’t taking new patients. We eventually got information on two doctors in the QCA who are accepting new patients; the earliest appointment was about a month out. Trisha Fisher is the Executive Director for UnityPoint Clinics. She says the average wait at UnityPoint is 16 business days, so about three weeks. That’s because most of their primary care physicians spend a large part of their day seeing only existing patients. “We want to be able to manage the patients we already have and provide quality care to them, so we don’t want them [our doctors] to have too big of practices,” Fisher said. On the Genesis website, it does show which doctors are taking new patients. Only one doctor in Dewitt, Iowa was taking online appointments. If you want to establish care with any other Genesis doctor, you can’t just call and schedule an appointment. You have to either go to a clinic in person and fill out a new patient form or request the form to be sent to you, then wait to see if you’re accepted. Genesis Health Group’s president, Kurt Andersen, says the average person can expect to wait two or three weeks. However, there are other options for those who need care. “If they have an urgent problem that’s not quite an emergency room visit but they really need to get in and see somebody, they’ve got high blood pressure, they’re running out of medications; some of those things we can still manage in the urgent care setting in the short-run while we find you a primary care doctor,” Andersen said. So if the demand, or amount of patients who need a family doctor, is high, why is our supply of primary care doctors so critically low? A 2010 study from Northwestern University described Illinois as “in danger of being unable to meet even the most pressing healthcare needs.” The report says half of residents and fellows who graduate end up leaving Illinois to practice. One reason cited in the study is that the state has a reputation for not being physician friendly, due to its medical liability procedures and high malpractice insurance rates. Another nationwide issue is salary. “It’s a lot of work to go through medical school and go through residency training to become a family medicine physician, and then going on and doing a fellowship or a specialty may potentially double or triple your income,” Andersen said. “If you think about it, if I’m a medical student, I’m going to come out of school with about $160,000 in debt, right out of the shoot. So being a specialist makes sense,” Spangler said. That’s why Spangler says giving people access to more drugs like allergy and anti-smoking medicine over the counter makes sense. Another approach that’s working for many hospitals and clinics is staffing a variety of healthcare providers. “We’ve shifted more to the team approach where we have advanced practitioners in our practices. So PA’s or physicians assistants as well as nurses.” Health care experts also recommend getting established with a primary care doctor before you’re sick; that way you don’t have as much trouble scheduling an appointment when you really need one. A Genesis representative says they will start using virtual care this spring. UnityPoint already uses the technology. In response to this story, a representative at UnityPoint sent us this statement: “Our mission is to improve the health of the people and communities we serve. We are constantly working to improve access to primary care in the Quad Cities by expanding our footprint and recruiting the world’s best physicians and medical providers. We want individuals, families, and their children to all have access to the best care possible. This will help in achieving our vision of best outcome every patient every time.”
