Locals Have Long Waits for Primary Care
the bridge
Adults in central Vermont may wait months to see a primary care provider — and still they’re better off than people in many other regions.
Local primary care clinics are scheduling new adult patients into late summer, autumn, and well beyond. Some are no longer adding names to their waitlists.
“Desperately looking for a primary doctor for my daughter. She hasn’t had any luck after looking for months!” wrote one Montpelier resident on Front Porch Forum last November.
Yet by U.S. standards, the area is in good shape. A 2021 report by the Robert Graham Center, which studies primary care policy, ranked Vermont first in the nation by the number of primary care physicians per 100,000 people.
Similarly, in 2022, the number of direct patient-care physicians in family practice/general medicine per 100,000 population was 55.8 in Vermont, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). By comparison, Maine had 57.3, while New Hampshire had 40.6, Massachusetts 23.4, and New York 21.6.