Improving Well-Being Among Trainees: A Partnership to Reduce Barriers to Primary Care Services

Improved well-being is a focus for graduate medical education (GME) programs. Residents and fellows often express difficulty with visiting primary care physicians, and this issue has not been thoroughly investigated.

We reported implementation and utilization of a primary care concierge scheduling service and a primary care video visit service for GME trainees.

GME leaders collaborated with Duke Primary Care to offer trainees a concierge scheduling service and opportunity for primary care video visits. This quantitative evaluation included (1) analysis of the institutional GME survey results pre- and post-intervention, and (2) review of use of the concierge scheduling line.

Comparison of the 2018 and 2019 internal GME surveys showed a decrease in perceived barriers accessing primary care (58% to 31%, P < .0001), a decrease in perceived delays to access primary care (27% to 21%, P = .023), and an increase in respondents who reported needing health care services in the past year (37% to 62%, P < .0001). Although increased need for health services was reported, there was no difference in the proportion reporting use of health services (63% and 65%, P = .43). Of the 142 concierge line calls reviewed, 127 (87%) callers requested clinic appointments, and 15 (10%) callers requested video appointments. Of callers requesting clinic appointments, 99 (80%) were scheduled.

Providing resources to connect trainees to primary care greatly reduces their perception of barriers to health care and may provide a convenient mechanism to schedule flexible primary care appointments.