Primary Care Docs Work About 62 Hours Weekly on Patient Care

Medscape November 4, 2025
Edited by Archita Rai

TOPLINE:

Primary care physicians (PCPs) spent a median of 61.8 hours per week caring for patients, with part-time PCPs investing more time per patient than their full-time colleagues. Panels with older patients, those with greater medical complexity, or more Medicaid enrollees required more time from PCPs.

METHODOLOGY:

• In a cross-sectional observational study, researchers estimated how much time PCPs spent caring for their patient panels and what factors influenced the length of that time.
• They used activity logs from electronic health records and administrative data from 33 clinics in Boston and involved 406 PCPs (62.3% women) who had patient visits for at least 9 months in 2021.
• One clinical full-time equivalent (cFTE) was defined as a PCP practicing eight clinical...

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