Primary care is the bedrock of a good health care system, but getting a new patient appointment can take weeks, if not months. Even after connecting with a medical scheduler, those looking for care may find that some doctors are not taking new patients at all. To gain a sense of how serious this access issue has become, Lown Institute researchers reached out to primary care offices affiliated with hospitals in the greater Boston region to try to schedule a new patient appointment.
Researchers asked schedulers some variation of the following question:
Hello! I’m shopping around for a new doctor. I’m looking to schedule an annual physical. How far out are you currently scheduling?
Between July 23 and August 13, 2025, during standard weekday office hours (9 a.m.–5 p.m.), our team contacted 86 hospitals or affiliated primary care offices. On average, researchers spent four minutes on the phone verifying an available appointment time.
Here’s what happened:
- 26% of providers were not taking new patients
- 7% of providers were unable to be contacted, because the available phone number was either disconnected or forwarded to a different office
- 14% of provider offices asked our researchers to provide personal information before scheduling; therefore we were unable to complete our inquiries
- That left 53% of providers for which researchers were able to get an estimate of the next available appointment.
Among the 46 offices that had available initial appointments, wait times varied considerably. The average wait time was 3.25 months (higher than the 40-day average wait found in the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission’s report earlier this year). However, some offices had appointments available within a month while others had an eight month wait time.
Why it Matters
This project focuses only on Greater Boston and Cape Cod, where hospital-affiliated networks dominate the primary care landscape. But access challenges like these are playing out nationwide, particularly as more independent practices are bought up by large systems.
Long wait times for primary care appointments can delay preventive care, worsen chronic conditions, and push more people into urgent care or emergency rooms—the most expensive settings in our already overburdened health system.
Research conducted by data science manager Paula Smith and healthcare data research assistants Kassandra Jean-Marie and Vivien Talon.