Expect long wait times to continue

San Diego, like many communities across the nation, experienced severe health care capacity issues in 2023, with many reporting long waits to schedule routine surgeries. Emergency departments were so full that medical staff were routinely forced to see patients in hallways. The situation pushed UC San Diego Health to buy Alvarado hospital in the fall and prompted the county to delay implementing a new law that expanded who could be placed on an involuntary hold.

This is not a new problem. AMN Healthcare, a medical staffing company formerly headquartered in San Diego, published a survey in 2022 of the 15 largest metro markets in the United States. They found that the average physician appointment time increased to 26 days. Individual specialties could be much longer, with the wait for obstetrics and gynecology appointments in San Diego hitting 38 days, on average, in 2022.

Will 2024 finally be the year when health care accessibility settles down? Local health care analyst Nathan Kaufman didn’t bother to give that notion much discussion, pointing to the massive change wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic: Many medical providers have quit their jobs. A study from Definitive Health Care in 2022 found that 230,609 health care providers across the nation had left the profession as of the fourth quarter of 2021.

Dan Gross, former Sharp Healthcare vice president recently retired and still involved in many pursuits in the medical world, said he sees no corner turning on the horizon. “I unquestionably think these issues will continue into 2024 and beyond,” Gross said.