If you think you’re waiting longer in the emergency room, or to get an appointment with your doctor, you’re not alone. It’s a simple supply and demand problem – increasing demand as our population grows and ages and decreasing supply as doctors retire earlier and faster than new doctors can be trained.

This is nothing new – but it is getting worse. Primary care and emergency medicine are the two areas hit the hardest. The average wait time to see a doctor has increased since 2017 and continued to rise after the demand spike brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Autumn Spredemann, writing for The Epoch Times, tells us a survey conducted by AMN Healthcare in 2022 of 15 large metro markets revealed that the average time to see a physician was 26 days – an 8 percent increase from 2017 and a 24 percent spike since 2004. Staff constraints are also felt in hospital emergency departments. Nearly 140 million Americans visited a hospital emergency department in 2021, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of those, about 13 percent resulted in hospital admission, and thousands waited hours to see health care providers. Many patients leave before being seen by doctors.

One study analyzed more than 1,000 hospitals between 2017 and the end of 2021 and found that those with the worst performance had 4.4 percent of emergency room patients leave before a medical evaluation was conducted. At the end of 2021, that number had risen to more than 10 percent. Compounding the problem is that nearly half of the doctor population will reach retirement age within the next 10 years and career burnout is hitting the rest harder than ever, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Just how bad is the problem?

Almost 50 percent of doctors report that they feel burned out, according to a 2024 Medscape report. Physician Thrive’s 2023 study states that the United States may have a shortage of 124,000 doctors by 2034.Within that shortfall, up to 48,000 will likely be lost from primary care, while the industry is projected to lose another 58,000 specialists, surgeons, and nurse practitioners.

What’s causing this shortage?

There are many reasons for this shortage, to name just a few:

• Increasing insurance company restrictions on the practice of medicine – which frustrates physicians and leads to burnout.
• Increasing percentage of doctors employed by hospitals and corporations – who control the way physicians practice medicine.
• Increasing numbers of patients enrolled in Medicaid – who can’t get in to see their doctors and resort to emergency rooms for primary care.
• Increasing time physicians must spend on paperwork and data entry – which keeps physicians from actually seeing patients.
• Increasing population aging with greater healthcare needs – which increases the demands for physician time.
• Decreasing respect for physicians in general – which adds to burnout
• Declining medical school applications – as medicine becomes less attractive
• Inadequate expansion of medical training programs – due to high cost and capital expansion demands

All of this should make you appreciate your doctor more if you have a good working relationship. But if you don’t, you’ve got lots of company!