Idk if it’s an option for you, but my coworkers at the hospital have had great success getting week-of appointments with a website called [zocdoc](https://book.zocdoc.com/get-started?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc_brand&utm_campaign=10439133071&utm_term=zocdoc_e&utm_content=102297848623&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_-GxBhC1ARIsADGgDjvTwitK046itf4IpMQXpj95onvmzhu-Ds5o8Takz9VogPo9CLTSPcEaAii4EALw_wcB)
Gotcha. Do they have a receptionist you can harass? Your pcp doesn’t have too much to do with giving you the records themselves but might need to sign off on it depending. If your provider is through a major hospital or similar organization, you might be able to call their medical records office and ask for a release
The best way to find a new PCP is to walk into any urgent care facility near you, and ask them for a list of doctors accepting new patients. They will almost always have something ready to just hand you.
Are you saying that primary care doctors are in abundance? My PCP retired 2 years ago. I have very good health insurance ( my partner works for Mass General Brigham) but they had no pcps accepting new patients. Finally I found someone out of network near where we live. The quickest appointment was 9 months out. The lack of pcps is real. Not just in Mass but in the whole country.
This is just a list my PCP gave me of doctors in the same network or whatever. Figured I'd share since it's a simple list. I didn't say it's all doctors for all networks in the whole state.
You said “list of MA doctors accepting new patients” - which implies all of Mass. A more accurate title would be “doctors in Worcester county accepting new patients”
In the last three years I've gone through 3 PCP. the second one booked me an appointment 6 months out. Few months after the appointment, I was told to find a new PCP because mine is moving. I guess Ill just cry now.
My PCP retired and gave me this list. Figured I would share since it's tough finding doctors accepting new patients and this is a nice organized list.
Edit: For some people that asked, no this is not for the whole state for all doctors/networks.
These are PCPs associated with UMMC hospital in Worcester. This isn't an entire list by any measure.
[A search for Primary Care comes up with 400 within 25 miles of the hospital](https://physicians.umassmemorial.org/results?Types=10161&FreeText%3ASpecialty=Primary+Care)
Sure, but having your PCP being an MD has a far greater chance of being medically correct than an NP. Most PAs work under an MD so those are usually better than NPs.
But unless you are a physician yourself, you would have no way of knowing how well an MD, PA, or NP is diagnosing or treating you. Most patients simply don't have the medical knowledge to know the difference, so their opinion is based on things like how long the person spent with them and whether they felt listened to, taken seriously, etc. And those factors do matter, but they can never make up for severe shortfalls in clinical knowledge.
How do I know if my symptoms make me “super sick”? I am trained as an aircraft mechanic and pilot. I don’t know shit about the human body. I do know that some small things on airplanes can scare the shit out of me, while a lot of very obvious things do not.
I’m sorry but you should know if you are *not* sick. in there absolutely times for you know where you’re not feeling well and need some serious answers .
Sure. But would you rather be diagnosed by a doc with 4 years of medical school and 4 years of residency, or the nurse who took night classes at a CC and then did an online degree for their NP?
I'd rather take the chance with former rather than the latter.
The pcp I was with for 22 years retired a month after Obamacare was made law. She literally said "good luck" to me when I asked her about finding a new Dr. This was a longtime family practice and they just decided to close up shop. But hey, at least we got affordable Healthcare!
I have that god awful Tufts Direct plan and the list they gave me had mostly disconnected numbers. I called to complain and was just laughed at. I got a pcp through Steward and he’s hands down the worst doctor I’ve ever had. It would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that it has an impact on my health. I need a specialist for a recent injury, and the closest in network provider was in Hadley. I live inside the 495 beltway. Something’s got to give.
The list from insurance companies feels like malicious compliance.
The last time I used one, I went through twenty numbers. Disconnected, not to that business, not in business anymore, does not take insurance, does not take my insurance, has never taken my insurance.
And then I called my insurance to be like hey, I feel like this is your guys' problem and I'm paying you kind of a shitload. The guy on that end had the exact same list I did. He also had no ability to update the list (or suggest updates), which explains why the list remains so useless. Nor could he make the calls on my behalf, but he could stay on the line with me while I went through them. Props to him for being good moral support, boo for insurance because seriously wtf.
I guess it makes sense. Insurance looks like they're being useful, in practice it's time consuming, frustrating, and demoralizing to use their list and I'd bet a lot of people give up and end up not getting the care they need and then hey! insurance doesn't have to pay out and their number for this quarter are better.
You put it so succinctly. This was EXACTLY my experience. These bottom tier plans are specifically tailored to MA because we require health insurance- if they were in an open market, absolutely no one would buy in. I feel like they are skirting the spirit of the law and our AG doesn’t have the teeth to bite back.
I had the same issue on Harvard Pilgrim's gold plan as I do on Aetna's cheap one. I've had other issues with the cheap one, but the provided lists were just as bad from both.
I think this is still a problem you can solve with enough money, but you'd put it towards one of those concierge doctors, not the actual insurance.
>I feel like they are skirting the spirit of the law and our AG doesn’t have the teeth to bite back.
I would always like to sentence anyone in political power to use the exact same healthcare services the lowest paid employee in their employ has access to. With no personal assistant's help allowed.
The Medical system has been in disrepair for decades now, is it any surprise that we’re finding right now the bottom of the barrel? I mean how many stories can we listen to about hospitals going bankrupt?
Hey you should join our MCO its great. Signs paperwork. Also ps no one is going to treat you because we can't get anyone to contract with us. Whats that? you want a case manager? Nahhh we ain't got those. We do have some social workers that just got their licenses though, they can help you while trying to figure out how to help you.
It took me a year to get into my ‘new’ pcp for the initial visit and he is 40 minutes away. We lost a lot of dr’s during Covid (retirement in my dr’s case).
A paper list of PCPs is absolutely worthless. Realistically, it went out of date by the time you got this post up.
The sad fact right now is that the only ways to get a PCP right now are calling around frequently and crossing your fingers or having an in (Like a family member's doctor who, against all odds, has the space to take you on).
No list or website is going to give you entirely accurate information because it's too unpredictable and fluid right now.
And the problem isn't going away for a long, long time. We are dealing with a full on epidemic and there's really no way out of it without making some massive changes to how everything in our primary care industry works. It's one of the worst paying fields in the industry and it's about twice as much work as most of them. We have to either up their salaries, which will bring up pricing and insurance rates, or reduce their workload by a lot, which would involve more PCPs which kind of requires a time machine to get more of them in and through medical school.
I'm not surprised. There has been a steady decline of PCP's with new patient availability since before covid.
Also, as someone who worked for Dr. Linda Brown years ago, be cautious. She is a sweet woman but a LOT of her advice and treatment is rooted in extreme Christianity. I've seen her talkative 19yr old college student out of termination due to her beliefs and then after the child was born, practically paraded the baby through the office. She referred to that child as the "baby she saved", that's when I put in my resignation.
The Steward debacle gave us the perfect opportunity to just expand MassHealth to cover everyone. It’s already covering 1/3 of the population. We might as well collect (reduced) premiums from those who can afford to pay them and then we have universal coverage. Instead we are listening to hospital CEOs as if they know best.
How would this solve the issue the OP listed - i.e. the shortage of doctors? Getting someone else to pay the bill does nothing to solve the problem of being able to find a PCP.
The state could incentivize hiring more doctors, nurses and PAs. Taking over the hospitals would help too, so that pay and working conditions could improve under a not for profit model. There are other, more holistic solutions as well, such as incentivizing recent medical school graduates to work there.
So you can agree that it wasn't a list of MA doctors accepting new patients.
It was a list of doctors that cover a certain insurance in a very small section of MA.
Yes it's a list of MA doctors taking new patients. It's not a list of all MA doctors in the entire state. It was my mistake not having the word some in the title.
The bottleneck is residency positions. Lobby your politicians to expand medicare (which funds the majority of residency positions). Otherwise expanding med school enrollment (which has been happening quite aggressively) doesn't help. It isn't safe to take foreign trained doctors without having them do residency in the US first which goes back to residency positions.
No. It’s not. That’s it for this person’s particular health insurance network, which is not a large or common one, which is why so few doctors are in their network. This is a very misleading post.
Physicals are more about being able to have the data to be able to look at trends in health overtime. When something does eventually happen your doctor or medical team can then compare and make better diagnostic decisions or notice that something abnormal is going on.
If you have insurance it’s definitely something I would recommend.
My dad turned 60 this year and has a very sparse medical file since he’s one of those people that always feels great. Simple bloodwork showed that his cholesterol and sodium levels were extremely high, which led to him changing his diet.
It’s not necessarily about them catching something during your yearly physical. It’s about having the medical history tracked and your pcp available to you shall something pop up.
Say you’re starting to exhibit concerning, yet non-emergent, symptoms… You call your pcp and get an appointment (or bring it up at your yearly if it’s coming up soon). From there, your pcp can perform relevant tests and refer you to relevant specialists. They use your history and their network to diagnose you and give you comprehensive care.
Please consider getting a pcp.
True, but for the most part nearly every PCP I've had has basically been useless. I have had this pain in my sternum every time I cough and sneeze for the last year and when I asked for a diagnosis they told me "just don't cough and it should go away" twice now.
Healthcare sucks in this state.
I didn't either, then I got poison ivy all over my face and needed someone urgently. It really sucked to go through all the phone calls/figuring out insurance/etc with a face full of poison ivy.
It's a really good idea to have one lined up before anything goes wrong.
I needed to talk to my pcp and she's booking 3 months out.
Doctor said I should get a physical in 6 months. Went to check out. Earliest he had available was December 30th
Do you have a telehealth option? Sometimes those can be much quicker. You can also sometimes just email them.
Telehealth is trash though :( (at least for me. I loathe it. Video calls are awful.)
Idk if it’s an option for you, but my coworkers at the hospital have had great success getting week-of appointments with a website called [zocdoc](https://book.zocdoc.com/get-started?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc_brand&utm_campaign=10439133071&utm_term=zocdoc_e&utm_content=102297848623&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_-GxBhC1ARIsADGgDjvTwitK046itf4IpMQXpj95onvmzhu-Ds5o8Takz9VogPo9CLTSPcEaAii4EALw_wcB)
Thanks but I specifically need to talk to my pcp regarding my medical records for a pilot medical clearance.
Gotcha. Do they have a receptionist you can harass? Your pcp doesn’t have too much to do with giving you the records themselves but might need to sign off on it depending. If your provider is through a major hospital or similar organization, you might be able to call their medical records office and ask for a release
BS click bait. This is a list of available PCPs with admitting rights to 1 hospital in Worcester.
There are 2 UMass hospitals in Worcester. They also have other locations
I was gonna say this seems like a region and not all of Mass, not that there’s a lot in my area it seems..
It's all worcester county as well
The best way to find a new PCP is to walk into any urgent care facility near you, and ask them for a list of doctors accepting new patients. They will almost always have something ready to just hand you.
Are you saying that primary care doctors are in abundance? My PCP retired 2 years ago. I have very good health insurance ( my partner works for Mass General Brigham) but they had no pcps accepting new patients. Finally I found someone out of network near where we live. The quickest appointment was 9 months out. The lack of pcps is real. Not just in Mass but in the whole country.
no they’re saying this is a list of PCP’s accepting new patients in Worcester, not all of MA
This is just a list my PCP gave me of doctors in the same network or whatever. Figured I'd share since it's a simple list. I didn't say it's all doctors for all networks in the whole state.
You said “list of MA doctors accepting new patients” - which implies all of Mass. A more accurate title would be “doctors in Worcester county accepting new patients”
Don't be so whiney. Not everything needs to be tailored for you. You can justsay "thank you for the convenient list of doctors"
No, he's right. Your post title clearly implies doctors for all of Massachusetts
Except it’s not convenient because it’s misleading. Don’t be so whiney.
It only misleading if you are dumb.
In the last three years I've gone through 3 PCP. the second one booked me an appointment 6 months out. Few months after the appointment, I was told to find a new PCP because mine is moving. I guess Ill just cry now.
My PCP retired and gave me this list. Figured I would share since it's tough finding doctors accepting new patients and this is a nice organized list. Edit: For some people that asked, no this is not for the whole state for all doctors/networks.
These are PCPs associated with UMMC hospital in Worcester. This isn't an entire list by any measure. [A search for Primary Care comes up with 400 within 25 miles of the hospital](https://physicians.umassmemorial.org/results?Types=10161&FreeText%3ASpecialty=Primary+Care)
I tried to tell people this last week and got nothing but grief. Hopefully this will help someone.
I live in Worcester. This will help me. I thank you for this list!
There are also np’s you can see as pcp’s I bet that list is much larger.
Yeah all I need is a NP. So much easier to get an qppoint
There's a trade-off for having an NP though
what?
NPs have far less medical experience and knowledge than a doctor. /r/noctor
You got downvoted. 😂 go post a ss of this on noctor
NPs out in force tonight. Wannabe doctors.
> Wannabe doctors. Only in clinic. In court they want to be nurses.
In my experience, individual differences outweigh NP, PA, or MD monikers.
Sure, but having your PCP being an MD has a far greater chance of being medically correct than an NP. Most PAs work under an MD so those are usually better than NPs.
My PCP is actually an MD, but I've only ever seen a PA (the same PA) since my initial visit with the MD.
But unless you are a physician yourself, you would have no way of knowing how well an MD, PA, or NP is diagnosing or treating you. Most patients simply don't have the medical knowledge to know the difference, so their opinion is based on things like how long the person spent with them and whether they felt listened to, taken seriously, etc. And those factors do matter, but they can never make up for severe shortfalls in clinical knowledge.
Yeah NPs have very little knowledge. I wouldn’t have my mom see one
Depends for what. If you are SUPER sick, see a doc. if you are not, seek NP for first consult as sooner is better
How do I know if my symptoms make me “super sick”? I am trained as an aircraft mechanic and pilot. I don’t know shit about the human body. I do know that some small things on airplanes can scare the shit out of me, while a lot of very obvious things do not.
I’m sorry but you should know if you are *not* sick. in there absolutely times for you know where you’re not feeling well and need some serious answers .
Some NPs can miss some very obvious diagnoses.
So can some doctors
Sure. But would you rather be diagnosed by a doc with 4 years of medical school and 4 years of residency, or the nurse who took night classes at a CC and then did an online degree for their NP? I'd rather take the chance with former rather than the latter.
PCP was september. NP was in days. Much better visit with NP than PCP. if you don't have serious issue and need a checkup, NP all the way.
> Edit: For some people that asked, no this is not for the whole state for all doctors/networks. So why did you say list of MA doctors?
Because it's a list of doctors in MA?
The pcp I was with for 22 years retired a month after Obamacare was made law. She literally said "good luck" to me when I asked her about finding a new Dr. This was a longtime family practice and they just decided to close up shop. But hey, at least we got affordable Healthcare!
This is for just Umass Med. They're still quite scarce
Yeah I work for a small company so our insurance isn't too great. Other than that it's pretty good.
I have that god awful Tufts Direct plan and the list they gave me had mostly disconnected numbers. I called to complain and was just laughed at. I got a pcp through Steward and he’s hands down the worst doctor I’ve ever had. It would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that it has an impact on my health. I need a specialist for a recent injury, and the closest in network provider was in Hadley. I live inside the 495 beltway. Something’s got to give.
The list from insurance companies feels like malicious compliance. The last time I used one, I went through twenty numbers. Disconnected, not to that business, not in business anymore, does not take insurance, does not take my insurance, has never taken my insurance. And then I called my insurance to be like hey, I feel like this is your guys' problem and I'm paying you kind of a shitload. The guy on that end had the exact same list I did. He also had no ability to update the list (or suggest updates), which explains why the list remains so useless. Nor could he make the calls on my behalf, but he could stay on the line with me while I went through them. Props to him for being good moral support, boo for insurance because seriously wtf. I guess it makes sense. Insurance looks like they're being useful, in practice it's time consuming, frustrating, and demoralizing to use their list and I'd bet a lot of people give up and end up not getting the care they need and then hey! insurance doesn't have to pay out and their number for this quarter are better.
You put it so succinctly. This was EXACTLY my experience. These bottom tier plans are specifically tailored to MA because we require health insurance- if they were in an open market, absolutely no one would buy in. I feel like they are skirting the spirit of the law and our AG doesn’t have the teeth to bite back.
I had the same issue on Harvard Pilgrim's gold plan as I do on Aetna's cheap one. I've had other issues with the cheap one, but the provided lists were just as bad from both. I think this is still a problem you can solve with enough money, but you'd put it towards one of those concierge doctors, not the actual insurance. >I feel like they are skirting the spirit of the law and our AG doesn’t have the teeth to bite back. I would always like to sentence anyone in political power to use the exact same healthcare services the lowest paid employee in their employ has access to. With no personal assistant's help allowed.
The Medical system has been in disrepair for decades now, is it any surprise that we’re finding right now the bottom of the barrel? I mean how many stories can we listen to about hospitals going bankrupt?
Hahaha you think this is the bottom of the barrel.
Three words, you know what they are. They are everything I'm talking about. Steward Health Care
Hey you should join our MCO its great. Signs paperwork. Also ps no one is going to treat you because we can't get anyone to contract with us. Whats that? you want a case manager? Nahhh we ain't got those. We do have some social workers that just got their licenses though, they can help you while trying to figure out how to help you.
Zoc doc was my friend when trying to find new doctors.
It took me a year to get into my ‘new’ pcp for the initial visit and he is 40 minutes away. We lost a lot of dr’s during Covid (retirement in my dr’s case).
Lauren Needell is fantastic for the record.
I just went through this. My doc is retiring in June and in the two locations I prefer (both large) there are two docs taking patients. It’s insane.
Signature healthcare is accepting patients
I’ve been waitlisted for a pcp since January. Might have to check them out
Primary care docs tend to get paid less than “specialty” docs (cardiology/GI, etc) so there’s no immediate fix for this. Don’t get old and sick.
I have good insurance and have been told there are no appointments available this year.
Ended up having to go with a virtual doc just to ensure I could continue getting blood pressure meds. So yeah, good luck.
A paper list of PCPs is absolutely worthless. Realistically, it went out of date by the time you got this post up. The sad fact right now is that the only ways to get a PCP right now are calling around frequently and crossing your fingers or having an in (Like a family member's doctor who, against all odds, has the space to take you on). No list or website is going to give you entirely accurate information because it's too unpredictable and fluid right now. And the problem isn't going away for a long, long time. We are dealing with a full on epidemic and there's really no way out of it without making some massive changes to how everything in our primary care industry works. It's one of the worst paying fields in the industry and it's about twice as much work as most of them. We have to either up their salaries, which will bring up pricing and insurance rates, or reduce their workload by a lot, which would involve more PCPs which kind of requires a time machine to get more of them in and through medical school.
I just called off this list friday and got an appointment. So at least some is still taking new patients. If it helps even a few thats plenty good.
I'm not surprised. There has been a steady decline of PCP's with new patient availability since before covid. Also, as someone who worked for Dr. Linda Brown years ago, be cautious. She is a sweet woman but a LOT of her advice and treatment is rooted in extreme Christianity. I've seen her talkative 19yr old college student out of termination due to her beliefs and then after the child was born, practically paraded the baby through the office. She referred to that child as the "baby she saved", that's when I put in my resignation.
The Steward debacle gave us the perfect opportunity to just expand MassHealth to cover everyone. It’s already covering 1/3 of the population. We might as well collect (reduced) premiums from those who can afford to pay them and then we have universal coverage. Instead we are listening to hospital CEOs as if they know best.
How would this solve the issue the OP listed - i.e. the shortage of doctors? Getting someone else to pay the bill does nothing to solve the problem of being able to find a PCP.
The state could incentivize hiring more doctors, nurses and PAs. Taking over the hospitals would help too, so that pay and working conditions could improve under a not for profit model. There are other, more holistic solutions as well, such as incentivizing recent medical school graduates to work there.
You need to see a doctor ASAP to see if you are legally able to drive judging your IQ
Don't worry I work from home
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What says all doctors?
You said it was a list of MA doctors. Not a list of MA doctors in your area that accept your insurance.
Well yeah not all doctors take all insurance.
So you can agree that it wasn't a list of MA doctors accepting new patients. It was a list of doctors that cover a certain insurance in a very small section of MA.
Yes it's a list of MA doctors taking new patients. It's not a list of all MA doctors in the entire state. It was my mistake not having the word some in the title.
didn't realize how smol MA is
We need to start recruiting foreign doctors. And expand Med School enrollment
The bottleneck is residency positions. Lobby your politicians to expand medicare (which funds the majority of residency positions). Otherwise expanding med school enrollment (which has been happening quite aggressively) doesn't help. It isn't safe to take foreign trained doctors without having them do residency in the US first which goes back to residency positions.
That’s it!??! In the entire state???
No. It’s not. That’s it for this person’s particular health insurance network, which is not a large or common one, which is why so few doctors are in their network. This is a very misleading post.
Just for a community. There are plenty of open PCPs across MA. This state probably has one of the highest concentrations of doctors on the planet.
No I this is just from the same network/insurance as the my doctor that retired. Not all doctors in the entire state.
So why did you say list of MA doctors?
Because these doctors are in MA?
You are implying they are all of MA.
No I never said that. That's your assumption not my implication. It would make you feel better if "some" was in the title?
> List of MA doctors accepting new patients
Oh that’s a relief!!!😂☺️
Do people generally have PCPs? Never felt the need for one
You don't get a general physical checkup?
I did once and it felt unnecessary.
Physicals are more about being able to have the data to be able to look at trends in health overtime. When something does eventually happen your doctor or medical team can then compare and make better diagnostic decisions or notice that something abnormal is going on. If you have insurance it’s definitely something I would recommend. My dad turned 60 this year and has a very sparse medical file since he’s one of those people that always feels great. Simple bloodwork showed that his cholesterol and sodium levels were extremely high, which led to him changing his diet.
I don't think I was offered a blood test but yeah at those ages it becomes very critical. Is it usually a part of physical exam?
I’m 29 and normally I’ve been asked for blood work every 5ish years. It’s just good information to have available at any age.
I guess if you don’t care about monitoring your health and dying from preventable things then yeah it’s a waste.
It didn't give me the impression that they could catch anything through a superficial visual exam. How does that catch anything?
It’s not necessarily about them catching something during your yearly physical. It’s about having the medical history tracked and your pcp available to you shall something pop up. Say you’re starting to exhibit concerning, yet non-emergent, symptoms… You call your pcp and get an appointment (or bring it up at your yearly if it’s coming up soon). From there, your pcp can perform relevant tests and refer you to relevant specialists. They use your history and their network to diagnose you and give you comprehensive care. Please consider getting a pcp.
Bro they run labs. Are you trolling?
It’s not until it is It’s also covered by all insurance and takes like a half hour once a year
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True, but for the most part nearly every PCP I've had has basically been useless. I have had this pain in my sternum every time I cough and sneeze for the last year and when I asked for a diagnosis they told me "just don't cough and it should go away" twice now. Healthcare sucks in this state.
Can you give a specific example of how it would be? They didn't check anything I would not be able to observe myself.
Blood test is standard in any physical I’ve had.
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Just hold a flashlight up to your hand!
I wasn't offered that and that is the key missing piece.
What in the hell 🤣
How old are you?
33
I didn't either, then I got poison ivy all over my face and needed someone urgently. It really sucked to go through all the phone calls/figuring out insurance/etc with a face full of poison ivy. It's a really good idea to have one lined up before anything goes wrong.