KevinMD January 26, 2026
Patient frustration is something many of us carry home at the end of the day. Much of that frustration, however, isn’t personal; it’s structural.
Many patients don’t realize that different primary care models are designed to deliver fundamentally different experiences. They expect concierge-level access and time within insurance-based practices. They want same-day appointments, unhurried visits, and immediate physician availability, regardless of the model they’re in. And when we can’t deliver what the model doesn’t support, they assume we’re not trying hard enough.
This expectation gap is quietly fueling physician burnout. We internalize structural limitations as personal failures. We work harder to compensate for constraints we didn’t create. The problem isn’t that patients are unreasonable. It’s that we’ve never educated them...
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