By Kendrick Johnson DO
I spent years inside the insurance-based primary care system. Here’s the part nobody says out loud: The 7-minute visit isn’t a failure of the system. It’s the output of the system.
When a doctor is paid per encounter, and reimbursement per encounter keeps falling, the only lever left is volume. More patients, less time. A panel of 2,500 people you cannot possibly know.
So what happens in 7 minutes? You treat the loudest problem. You refill a prescription. You refer out anything complicated. You don’t ask about sleep, or stress, or the fact that this patient’s dad had a heart attack at 51. There’s no time.
Then that patient waits 3 weeks for the next opening, gives up, and goes to urgent care. Or waits until it’s bad enough for the ER. Everyone downstream pays for that: the patient, the employer, the plan.
I left to build something different — 30–45 minute visits, a panel small enough that I actually know my patients, and a phone number that reaches me directly. Not because I’m a better doctor. Because I finally have the time to be one.
If you’re a CFO or HR leader looking at another double-digit renewal: the problem isn’t your network. It’s that nobody in it has 7 minutes to spare, let alone 45. What would your employees do with a doctor who had time?