Patients are willing to wait to see their own doctor

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A recent study suggests that patients often prefer to wait for an appointment with their own primary care physician (PCP) — particularly for chronic condition management, mental health care and other sensitive issues. It’s when symptoms are acute or urgent that speed becomes the priority.

Published in the Annals of Family Medicine, the cross-sectional survey of 2,320 primary care patients examined when patients are willing to wait for continuity and when they prefer convenience. The findings offer important insights for health system leaders and private practice owners navigating appointment design, staffing and access models.

“Most patients in our study place strong importance on having a personal PCP and valued continuity of care,” the authors wrote. In fact, 94.1% of surveyed patients reported having a PCP, and 71.4% said it was “extremely important” to have a personal doctor.

When asked about specific visit types, more than half of patients expressed a strong preference to only see their own physician for follow-ups involving mental health (56.8%), chronic conditions (54.6%) or annual checkups (52.6%).

However, the willingness to wait changed significantly depending on the nature of the visit. Just 17.1% of respondents preferred to wait to see their own physician for a new symptom, and only 7.2% said they would wait for their PCP when experiencing an urgent concern.

To better understand how patients weighed the importance of continuity against wait time, the survey presented them with hypothetical scenarios.

For example, when asked whether they would rather see their own PCP in three to four weeks or another clinician available in 24 to 48 hours, 68.2% said they would wait for their physician if the issue might require a sensitive exam. Similarly, 61.1% would wait for a new concern about a chronic condition, and 58.9% would wait for a new mental health concern.

When symptoms were more acute or nonspecific — a sore throat or bodily pain — just 6.9% and 33.9% of respondents, respectively, preferred to wait.

The study also revealed demographic patterns in preferences. “For follow-up of a chronic health condition, patients with higher WMI scores had a higher likelihood of wanting to see only their PCP,” the authors reported, referring to the “What Matters Index,” a measure of self-reported health risk.

Education level played a role as well. Patients with a high school diploma or less had higher odds of wanting to see their own PCP for new symptoms or urgent concerns. For new symptoms, those with a high school education or general educational development test (GED) were 3.6 times more likely than college graduates to prefer their own doctor. Women were also more likely to prefer continuity for annual checkups.

“These patterns are similar to those in past studies highlighting that older age, worse self-reported health status, and female sex were associated with placing higher value on continuity of care,” the authors wrote.

The results offer timely guidance as health systems increasingly expand walk-in clinics, same-day scheduling, and team-based care models. While those efforts improve access, they may unintentionally chip away at continuity — something this study suggests patients still value highly in many contexts.

“Our data demonstrate that most patients are willing to wait three to four weeks to see their own PCP for certain types of visits, underscoring the importance of seeing someone they trust over the convenience of being seen more quickly,” the authors wrote.

For practice managers, these findings may help shape more flexible scheduling systems — perhaps by triaging based on visit type and offering patients choices that explicitly weigh speed versus familiarity. Practices could also use online scheduling tools to let patients decide how long they’re willing to wait to see their own physician versus the next available clinician.

The study’s authors caution that their findings may not generalize to all patient populations. The survey was conducted at six family medicine clinics in a large academic health system, and respondents had higher education levels than the national average. Still, the insights carry weight for any primary care practice aiming to balance access and relationship-driven care.

“Data from our study and others suggest that these shifts do not align with patient preferences for care, or with important health outcomes such as emergency department and hospital use,” authors concluded.

The full research article, “Convenience or Continuity: When Are Patients Willing to Wait to See Their Own Doctor?” appears in the March/April 2025 issue of Annals of Family Medicine.