OHIO — People across the nation are having a hard time landing a primary care doctor as new patients.

A recent study showed a national physician shortage has been growing. A physician shortage of more than 80,000 doctors will hit the country by 2036 if nothing is done to resolve this problem, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

But the national shortage isn’t the only problem pulling down access to health care.

When calling into a primary care office, many patients are met with an automatic message warning that providers are scheduling appointments approximately three to six months out because of an influx of calls. 

Dr. Brian L. Bachelder, from Mount Carmel Medical Group, has been practicing family medicine for the last 43 years and he said having so many new people in his office is something he finds unusual. The reason he has open spots is that he recently moved to a new office.

“I get to see new patients pretty much on a daily basis, anywhere from usually two to even three or four patients a day that are new,” Bachelder said. “I had a patient about two weeks ago told me that she’d been looking for a doctor for a year.”

Todd Baker, CEO of Ohio State Medical Association, has been working with physicians and in organized medicine for 30 years.

Baker said finding a doctor in rural areas is very tough, and that’s why they’re pushing for a change in legislation in Ohio.

“This year we’ll be working on a number of reforms for the insurance industry that we think will benefit patients and physicians,” Baker said. “Costs and regulation have gone through the roof and reimbursements have gone down and so it is impossible, mostly impossible, in today’s day and age to be able to run a practice independently in those (rural) communities.”

One example that’s making things more expensive for physicians, Baker said, is prior authorization and having to get through paperwork as doctors are trying to examine their patients.

“The amount of regulatory hoops that I have to jump through with the insurance companies have created that roadblock,” Baker said. “That has created that extra expense on my end before I can order a test for you, before I can or get a drug for you.”

Sometimes, people may have to wait weeks for even a call back. In some automated messages, callers are warned it may take more than eight weeks to hear from a doctor.

Dr. Mark Conroy is the medical director of the Emergency Department at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center University Hospital.

Conroy said those long waits of getting a doctor are pushing people to emergency rooms that are often overcrowded.

“By no fault of their own, primary care physicians are extremely busy. They have a lot of patients to care for and there’s a national physician shortage,” Conroy said. “(Patients) want to make sure they don’t have something along the lines of pneumonia or appendicitis. They want to make sure their condition isn’t more severe than they think.”

There are attempts to fix this problem, Conroy and Baker said, while motivating more people to go into medicine or bring people from overseas.

“There’s loan forgiveness, there’s increasing residency slots,” Baker said. “There’s the J-1 visa program.”

“OSU does something like that where they have individuals who have committed who commit early to wanting to be family practice physicians and work out in the community,” Conroy said. “They have a kind of an accelerated course through medical school and then they can be accepted into residency and finish their schooling and training in a much quicker process.”

Doctors say don’t quit when trying to get an appointment and it seems impossible.

Conroy said it gets easier if people establish a relationship with a primary care doctor.

“We see a lot of people coming to the emergency department that don’t end up having a primary care physician,” Conroy said. “They’ve just not established with one and so it’s not even an access issue.”

There are a few bills that will come up soon here in Ohio proposing to reform the system while addressing some issues in health care.

Bachelder said when you have a primary care doctor you can also save money because this shortage may not be going away anytime soon.

“Studies show that it saves around 15% to total health care costs if you have a primary care doctor,” Bachelder said. “Medical students going into primary care to replace not only the physicians who are retiring, but the physicians, or the primary care needs down the road, so we need more primary care doctors.”