What's that major metro area? I'm in San Francisco and I have family in Boulder and in both primary care is like one or two weeks. Dermatology was a week and a half for me. A few months ago I needed imagining for a foot thing and it took three days for ultrasound and one week for an MRI. I thought this was the norm on big urban centers.

Chicago. My actual GP schedules months out. An appointment with "any doctor in their practice" is within a week. An appointment at their affiliated urgent-care takes hours, usually less. The correct strategy is to get a GP affiliated with an urgent-care, schedule a checkup with the GP, and, meanwhile, just go to the urgent-care for everything; they'll send records over to your doctor if there's anything complicated.

Chicago, I can make a televisit appointment to my primary care doctor typically with 1 day lead times. In person is typically 2 so he can schlep down to his office. He is a single practitioner with part time office and IT help. He recommends going to the minute clinic a block away from my house for most things that I can recognize and only calling him for a yearly consult which is a review of blood tests and a discussion about my health or for something the clinic didn’t figure out.

This seems like a completely reasonable approach and I’m always surprised that it’s not the default.

Every "Family" doctor has stopped practicing or gone to a no insurance model that caters to wealthy people. You can only get "internal medicine" doctors for primary care. I've seen waits ranging from 4 months to a year, depending on what your dealing with.

It's also impossible to get a 2nd opinion. The specialists all tend to belong to the same groups so you'll call a different doctor and eventually get shunted back to the exact same doctor you started out with. Where the the competition?

I live in a suburban area and I go to the doctor for completely random things for my kids because it’s so easy. I can get appointments to be seen within hours.

Midwest, large city; pediatrician is same day, Allergist same week, Developmental Pediatrics was 4 months, Pediatric Ophthalmology was a year, it really varies. I'm lucky to have all these specialities available, people drive 2 or 3 hours to use the Midwest Eye Institute.