5 ways to shorten your wait for a doctor's appointment

IF YOU'VE TRIED TO SCHEDULE a doctor's appointment recently, you might have had to flip your calendar to a different season.

- ANGELA HAUPT

There simply aren't enough physicians in the U.S.: going by current demand for health care, by 2037, the deficit is expected to reach 187,130 doctors, including more than 8,000 cardiologists and 4,000 nephrologists. That means patients routinely wait a long time an average of 38 days, according to some databefore they're able to snag an appointment with a doctor they really need to see.

"People are constantly trying to get in to see doctors," says Dr. Gerda Maissel, a physician and patient advocate in New York who helps people navigate the health care system. She once worked with a man who wanted to see a specialist at a major academic center about his worsening neurological disease. After he accepted an appointment 10 months down the road, "he and his wife were just beside themselves," she recalls. "He had a tremendous need, and the academic center was just like, 'Yeah, sorry, everybody wants [that specialist]." Thousands of different versions of that story unfold every single day for patients across the country, she says.