A recent article claimed that some PCP’s had patient panels exceeding 3700. David Williams doesn’t believe it:
I think these numbers are an exaggeration, especially the first. Most primary care physicians have 1500 to 2500 patients and somehow seem to survive. To have even 3750, never mind 5000 would require never seeing most of them or making heavy use of nurse practitioners and other “physician extenders.”
If these doctors are struggling under such heavy loads, why don’t they just scale back to a typical number of patients rather than going berserk and dropping to only several hundred?
