Fifteen minutes. That’s about as much time as many primary care doctors in South Florida allocate to spend with each patient.

When Vicki Minard of Fort Lauderdale learned about the time limit from her primary care, she felt angry.

“Primary care doctors must explore many conditions with each patient before determining if a specialist should be consulted. How can this possibly be done in 15 minutes?” Minard wants to know. “Three minutes are spent on pleasantries and assessment of the general appearance of the patient. Then the question-and-answer period, followed by an examination. … Fifteen minutes?”

Patients in the Sunshine State crave an ongoing relationship with a trusted primary care doctor, but they are exhausted and exasperated by the barriers to making that happen. Not only do patients feel rushed during appointments, but they also feel frustrated trying to get an appointment. What’s causing this sad state of primary care in Florida, and can it be fixed?

The South Florida Sun Sentinel asked readers to share their experiences with primary care providers. Readers responded by email, describing their long wait times and rushed appointments. Some noted that it can take weeks, even months, for an existing patient to get a doctor’s appointment with a primary care provider and much longer for new patients.

“When I found myself needing neck surgery, I learned that I needed a primary care physician to complete the admissions process,” said Carolann Davison of Fort Lauderdale.

Davison said she called various doctor groups and couldn’t get an appointment for two months. “But for a family friend who is in the medical field, getting me a timely appointment with a personal doctor friend of theirs, I would still be waiting for that appointment and, ultimately, my much-needed surgery.”

Behind the frustration lies an aging population needing more care and a physician shortage expected to worsen as more doctors near retirement. This national trend hits particularly hard in Florida where those 65 and older comprise 21% of the population.

Another factor is that insurers are bickering with physician practices over reimbursement rates. Just when patients get comfortable with a doctor, they learn the physician has been dropped from their plan.

Patients say standoffs between providers and insurers make relationship-building challenging.

“Finding a primary care physician in the West Palm Beach or North Palm Beach area is very difficult,” wrote a reader who did not provide their name. “There are large groups where you see a nurse or PA (physician assistant). However, becoming a patient of record for a good doctor in a single or small practice is very difficult and almost impossible if you have Medicare Advantage.”

It’s no wonder that 70% of Gen Z said the ER and urgent care are their main source of healthcare, according to Aflac’s 2024 Wellness Matters Survey.

Dr. Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician and instructor at Harvard Medical School, sums it up well in Harvard Health when he answers, “Why is it so challenging to find a primary care physician?” He cites three reasons: Patients and doctors are getting older (doctors are leaving the profession, and the population needs more care); primary care physicians have high burnout rates (lots of administrative work and low pay); and the responsibilities are greater (more patients, more electronic record keeping, and less administrative support).

With these trends, concierge medicine is growing in popularity. In this model, patients pay a monthly fee or annual retainer to receive personalized care from a physician. This typically includes round-the-clock access to their doctor and same-day appointments.

“The only way to get a timely appointment is to have a concierge doctor,” said Marie Reamer of Delray Beach. “My husband and I pay a total of $4,600 per year in addition to Medicare fees, Medicare Medigap plan and a drug plan. The total paid is approximately $5,000. Then, there are the costs not paid for by Medicare.”

Reamer considers the concierge fee worth it: “We can get same-day care. Or next-day care. My husband still works full time, so it is not a hardship to pay this much, but when he retires, it will be difficult to keep up with the cost, especially in Florida, where insurance costs may cause us to leave our retirement home for a more affordable area. After only three years here, I often wonder how other retirees can afford to live here.”

The doctors say they are frustrated, too. They want to get to know their patients and practice preventive care.

Dr. Kamaljit Kaur says that while working as a primary care physician for Cleveland Clinic Florida and Baptist Health South Florida, she was burdened by corporate oversight, paperwork, and inflexible patient schedules. “I thought to myself, my patients deserve better.”

So Kaur recently opened a practice in Coral Springs that adopts a model similar to concierge medicine. She calls it a direct/membership-based primary care practice.

“Instead of contracting with United and Cigna, we contract with the patient,” she said. “You pay me and I’m your doctor and there’s no middle man. Each patient has a formal 12-month contract. You pay a fee, and these are the services I will provide you.”

“You have me on retainer for when you need me because I’m not taking on 2,000 to 3,000 patients like regular primary care physicians who take insurance. I’m only taking on 300 patients so I can actually provide that really personal level of care.”

Kaur said she spends as much as 90 minutes with a patient, and her annual fee of $3,000 is less than what patients with high-deductible health insurance plans would pay.

“I do see this as the future. We can’t keep going the way we’re going,” she said.

In Harvard Health, Grinspoon offers his solutions to reverse the primary care crisis: Train more primary care doctors, eliminate the pay gap between primary care and specialists who earn more, provide more support for doctors currently trying to stick it out, and cultivate a pipeline of new primary care doctors.

Grinspoon says it’s essential for patients to have a doctor who knows them. “With our country’s fraying healthcare system,” he points out, “it is almost impossible to access any type of coherent medical care without the coordination of a primary care physician.”

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©2024 South Florida Sun Sentinel. Visit at sun-sentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.