Understanding Primary Care Workload: Data-Driven Insights and Management Strategies

Primary care physicians now spend a median 61.8 hours per week on patient-panel work, a workload that reshapes staffing, panel size, and continuity, according to a recent report. That total captures not only face-to-face clinic time but also inbox work, phone and e-visits, and care coordination tasks.

Unlike session-based estimates that record only in-clinic hours, the time-use analysis broadens the accounting to asynchronous and remote work. Framing clinician time this way highlights hidden workload that session counts miss and clarifies why measured capacity often falls short of access goals.

The report names major contributors: EHR-related activities (charting and inbox management), care coordination, and complexity-driven visit tasks. However, it also notes study-design limits and frames the findings as indicative of workload patterns rather than definitive national averages.

Those high weekly hours push practices toward operational adjustments—smaller panel targets, clearer delegation to care teams, or workflow redesign—because time-per-patient, not panel count alone, determines feasible access and continuity.

In practice, the data link workforce planning, workflow optimization, and tool improvements as immediate areas for intervention to preserve clinician capacity and patient access.