Patient Wait Time for a Family Practice Appointment: 15 Major US Cities Surveyed

The average wait time for an appoitment with a family medicine physician in the US is 20.6 days, according to findings of a new survey by physician recruiting firm Merritt Hawkins. That period is approximately 30% shorter than it was in 2017, when the wait for a nonemergent office visit (ie, a physical examination) was 29.3 days.

Average patient waits across the country today range from a high of 44 days in Portland, OR, to a low of 8 days in Washington, DC.

The survey, conducted in 15 large metropolitan markets in Spring 2022, tallied responses from 1034 distinct physician offices across 5 medical specialties (family medicine, cardiology, dermatology, obstetrics-gynecology, and orthopedic surgery) and compared them to findings from 2017, the last year the survey was conducted. The family medicine findings follow here.