Why do I have to wait so long for a physical?
You know you've wondered this
Physicals require more work for PCPs, so offices have a limit on how many physicals a provider can see in a day. For example, a provider could have a maximum of 3 physicals in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. This allows room in their schedule for routine follow-ups, sick visits and same-day urgent appointments, all of which are necessary and do get booked up. So when you call a PCP office to schedule a physical and they tell you the next available appointment is in 9 months, that doesn't mean the physician's schedule is booked solid for the next 9 months; it means according to the office's scheduling policy, the physicians are maxed out on their availability for physicals for the next 9 months.
The rationale is that since physicals are by nature non-urgent, you should be able to wait that long. It also gives you time to collect any previous medical records you may have and transfer them to your new doctor's office. Everyone should have some medical records, with the bare minimum being a record of your childhood vaccinations. Otherwise, it is even more work for the first doctor you see to create your medical record from scratch.
My recommendation is that no matter how long the wait is, you should just schedule an appointment, because those wait times are not going to get any shorter.
Why do physicals require more work for PCPs?
Physicals are a comprehensive review of an individual's health, and there is a lot of ground to cover. The bare minimum a doctor has to do in a physical is:
Check status of preventative screening (pap, mammogram, colonoscopy, bone density) as appropriate. Amazingly, Epic does not have a way to easily see all this info at once - a provider has to search separately to find each last screening, then look into the corresponding note for the results of that screening and for follow up instructions.
Review your vitals taken during rooming, see if there is any cause for concern there.
Review status of any existing conditions.
Review all medications, refilling and making changes as necessary.
Give you a chance to bring up any new concerns, and begin to address them.
Review diet, exercise, sleep habits.
Update social history (smoking, drinking, etc).
Update family history.
Conduct the physical exam.
Review blood work, checking when labs were last done, what their results were, what you may be due for.
Review vaccination status, see if you are due for any.
Documentation is required for everything, even if there are no changes, and the Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR) requires a lot of clicking back and forth to document things in the right places. For example, placing any orders - a prescription, imaging, lab, vaccine, or referral - requires clicking through several screens and separate documentation in the "Assessment & Plan" part of the doctor's note.
This is all just the mechanics - never mind the rapid diagnostic problem-solving the doctor does throughout everything they review and talk about with you and other members of their team. Layer on that a PCP may see 20 different patients a day, with more messaging them at any time regardless of urgency, so they have to at least look at everything to make sure there isn't an emergency. Layer on that a PCP may actually have a life of their own, with all the responsibility and unanticipated interruptions that entails.
Physicals require a doctor to evaluate your whole health in the context of your specific life circumstances, and a PCP's worst fear is that they miss something small that turns into something big. So it can be kind of exhausting in different ways.