TUESDAY, May 26, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Retired physician Ken Licker is old enough to remember a time when you could call your family doctor and see them within a matter of days, if not hours.

“You call for an appointment now, and you’re a regular patient but you need to see him for a new problem,” Licker, 82, of Frisco, Texas, said. “Well, today is May 15. He can see you on June 30. At that point, it isn’t worth it.”

Licker isn’t alone in his frustration – and experts say it’s very likely to get much worse before it gets better.

More than 8 in 10 U.S. adults (84%) have a family physician or primary care doctor, according to a new HealthDay/Harris Poll survey.*

But many of these folks have a family doctor only on paper, it seems.

The survey found that nearly 3 out of 5 people who have a family doctor (58%) say they are unable to receive care when they need it – due to a lack of available appointments, an inability to reach a receptionist, a too-long wait for the next open date or other similar problems.

“These findings underscore a paradox at the heart of American healthcare: People clearly understand the value of family medicine, yet our systems have failed to make it accessible or reliable,” said Kathy Steinberg, vice president of health care research at The Harris Poll.

“There are barriers to getting a family doctor for those who want one, and even for those who have a primary family doctor, they still sometimes experience barriers in accessing the care that they need,” Steinberg told HealthDay.

Finding a family doctor or getting in to see them when you’re sick is likely to become even more challenging in the coming years, as the United States faces a growing shortage of primary care physicians, said Dr. Jennifer Brull, board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

“We know that we're going to need about 40,000 more primary care physicians by the year 2036, which is a really scary number,” Brull said.

“The beautiful thing is that the shortage is solvable if we make the right investments, but the reality on the ground right now? There is a shortage,” she added.

Why Family Medicine Matters

Having a family doctor is vital, given that more than 2 out of 3 U.S. adults (68%) surveyed in the HealthDay/Harris Poll are living with a chronic health condition like high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, heart disease, diabetes, obesity or asthma.

In the United States, primary care physicians serve on the front lines of health care. They provide regular care to their patients, track their health over the years and refer them to specialists for more treatment as necessary.

“I had a patient today who has not seen a doctor in 20 years,” said Dr. Jason Goldman, immediate past president of the American College of Physicians. “He came to me because last month he had a stroke, a heart attack, multiple procedures and now realizes he needs to be seeing a primary care doctor.

“If a patient like that had seen me 20 years ago, we would have prevented possibly these issues, by treating their cholesterol, their heart disease and everything else,” Goldman said.

The 15% of Americans who don’t have a family doctor – more than 40 million people – further highlight the benefits of having a physician focused on your care, the poll found.

Of those, 45% have had a health issue related to their lack of a family doc. Among them:

15% were unable to get a diagnosis for their symptoms.
14% wound up in an emergency room due to an untreated illness or injury.
14% went without any treatment for an illness or injury.
12% were unable to get a prescription filled.
10% had worsening illness because they couldn’t get a diagnosis or treatment.
10% had to visit multiple providers or clinics to finally get the care they needed.

“We asked adults who don’t have a family doctor, who or what do you turn to when you need medical or health care?” Steinberg said of the poll.

“I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that the No. 1 answer was urgent care (40%),” she said. “The No. 2 answer was the ER (26%).

“What I found shocking and concerning is that 29% of those who don’t have a doctor said none,” Steinberg said. “They just don't receive care from another source when they need it. That’s a lot of unmet need.”

A future segment of HealthDay’s series will dive deeper into how the family doctor shortage affects everyday Americans’ health.

Finding A Family Doctor

But it’s not necessarily easy to find a primary care physician who’s taking on new patients, even if you have insurance.

About 27% of those who have a primary care doctor or family physician said they found them through their health insurance plan, and another 27% said they were referred by a friend or family member.

Around 15% said they were referred by another health care provider, and 22% said they searched online to find their doc.

Unfortunately, many of these folks reported barriers to finding and maintaining a relationship with a family doctor:

38% said it’s hard to find a doctor they like.
36% came up against docs not taking new patients.
36% said their insurance wouldn’t cover the doc they wanted to see.
25% said there aren’t enough primary care providers.
23% said they didn’t have health insurance.
22% said they didn’t know where to look in the first place.

The United States is facing a family doctor shortage because of several factors, Brull said.

“We have a very large generation of family doctors who were part of the baby boomers who are reaching the age of retirement, and it's time for them to celebrate and take a break and not work anymore,” she explained.

“And that's wonderful for them,” she continued. “Unfortunately, they are leaving the workforce in addition to a significant number of family physicians who are experiencing burnout and leaving clinical care because of that burnout.”

Brull said the stress and strains of the COVID-19 pandemic added to this burnout, prompting some doctors to leave family medicine for other medical careers or to give up medicine altogether.

“The rate at which people are leaving family medicine and primary care in general is exceeding the rate of those entering family medicine,” she said. “So we have a historic problem in which the value of primary care physicians is underrecognized, and this is driving a shortage of clinicians.

Panel Predicaments

To counter the family doctor shortage, physicians are under pressure to increase the number of patients under their care, which doctors refer to as their panel.

“Family physicians today are caring for a growing number of patients on their panel,” Brull said. “These people are identified as their patients perhaps through an insurance or an employer program, and yet there just isn't space on the physician's calendar to see all of the patients that are attributed to them or who claim them as their own.”

It’s natural that average folks – and even some doctors – are dumbfounded by the concept of taking on more people than you can reasonably treat, said Dr. Caroline Richardson, a practicing family medicine physician and chair of family medicine at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

“How do you get your entire practice booked up and you have no access for urgent appointments? What happened there?” she told HealthDay.

“We’re being pushed to have larger and larger panels of patients,” Richardson said. “Where before you may have been 1 patient out of 1,500, now you’re 1 patient out of 3,000, and there’s just not enough slots.”

In fact, family doctors who work for a large health system are rewarded for taking on more patients, even if they won’t be able to actually see them, Richardson said.

“There's a contract between the health system and the physician who's practicing as an employee of the health systems,” she said. “Often in the contract there's some stipulation of you have to carry this many people on your panel, that's the expectation, and often there's a payment attached to meeting that expectation."

As a result of taking on all these patients, doctors find themselves run ragged, Brull said.

“Most physicians spend almost as much time charting, doing prior authorizations, reaching out and trying to find consultant notes and closing loops as they do in actually seeing patients face to face,” she said. “A lot of that explains why patients have doctors but can't see those doctors.”

Are There Alternatives?

Folks who can’t see their doctor are forced to go to an urgent care center, a retail medicine clinic or an ER. About 74% of Americans say they’ve gone to an urgent care or retail medicine clinic, and 72% have been treated at an ER, the survey found.

Of those who went to these centers in lieu of a family doc, the vast majority felt they got the care they needed. Nearly 9 in 10 (89%) said they were satisfied with their treatment, with more than 2 in 5 (43%) strongly agreeing that they were satisfied.

While people got the care they needed in the moment, having to go to urgent care or the ER might mean patients aren’t getting the nuanced level of treatment they might receive from the doc who knows them best, experts said.

“The benefit to having a partner in your life and your health is that that partner knows you a whole lot better than someone that you are meeting for the first time in an urgent care center,” Brull said. “They're going to be aware of your chronic conditions, your past medical history, the medications you're taking. Even if you can't remember all of them, they're going to.”

For Goldman, this also somewhat applies to another tactic that family medicine clinics are using to meet patients’ needs – relying on nurse practitioners and physician assistants to consult with patients who can’t score a doctor’s appointment.

“Nurse practitioners have their appropriate role, but they are not the head of the medical team,” Goldman said. “If there are not enough pilots, do you let the flight attendants fly the plane just because they’re there?”

Not to mention, people who must resort to urgent care or the ER also face bigger medical bills, Brull noted.

“Certainly, there is a financial cost to that patient because almost always the cost of going to the emergency room, whether you have insurance or you don’t have insurance, is greater than the cost of seeing your primary care physician,” she said.

In addition, “you’re probably going to wait a really long time to be seen in that emergency room,” Brull continued. “That might cost you hours away from your job. It certainly costs you hours away from your family. And it’s no fun to sit in an emergency room waiting room.”

In a future installment, HealthDay will look into how other care models fit in with U.S. family medicine – and whether any might pose a challenge to the current status quo.

Americans Still Appreciate Family Medicine

Despite these frustrations, the HealthDay/Harris Poll found a lot of evidence that Americans continue to support and appreciate family medicine.

“Nearly 9 in 10 Americans, regardless of whether they have a provider or not, agreed that it is important to have an ongoing relationship with one primary care doctor who oversees your medical care,” Steinberg said. “And more than half strongly agreed with that statement.”

Family doctors also are the top source people turn to when they have a medical question, with 28% saying that’s where they go first. By comparison, internet search engines were the first stop for 21% of those polled, and friends and family, 14%.

“This is a reaffirmation of what we are seeing in our offices every day,” Brull said. “[We know there are] patients that we don't know about who live in our communities who are trying to reach care that aren't able to do so.”

That includes Licker, a retired urologist who now is fighting kidney cancer with chemotherapy.

“I have some pretty terrible side effects from it, sometimes it takes two days to get a response,” he said.

“In one case, I got put on terminal hold," he explained. "I called at around 4 p.m. and I’m holding, and at 4:45 I get a message, our office is now closed, please call tomorrow.

Licker laughed ruefully, and added, “Thank you for being so responsive.”

*HealthDay/Harris Poll surveyed people across the United States regarding their experiences and views of family medicine. The survey was performed in two waves in March and April of 2026, involving a total 4,180 people.

More information

The Association of American Medical Colleges has more on the U.S. physician shortage.

SOURCES: Health Day/Harris Poll; Kathy Steinberg, vice president of health care research, The Harris Poll; Dr. Jennifer Brull, board chair, American Academy of Family Physicians; Dr. Jason Goldman, president, American College of Physicians; Dr. Caroline Richardson, practicing family medicine physician and chair of family medicine, Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School

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