By Kim Ariyabuddhiphongs, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer, ConvenientMD

This article first appeared in the August 2026 edition of Maine Medicine, a quarterly publication of the Maine Medical Association

For years, the conversation around primary care has focused on a familiar problem: there aren’t enough practitioners. That shortage is real, but it obscures another challenge hiding in plain sight.

Many practitioners are walking away from primary care, not because they’ve lost faith in the profession, but because they haven’t been granted the time to practice it the way they were trained. And many of them are burning out from the strain.

Most primary care practitioners didn’t choose a career in medicine so they could race through appointments and an endless stream of paperwork, with one eye always on the clock. Most in primary care chose that field because they care about people and they want to help them live healthier lives.

They chose it because they believed relationships matter, that listening carefully, understanding context and helping patients stay healthy over time is some of the most meaningful work in health care. Yet today’s system often doesn’t reward that practice.

Practitioners know what comprehensive care looks like, but the structure around them makes it difficult to deliver.

As patient panels grow larger and more complex, administrative demands rise and financial incentives reshape health care, primary care has increasingly become a volume business. That means shorter patient visits. But short visits leave little room to uncover the concerns patients hesitate to mention until the end of an appointment, explore the social factors affecting health or develop realistic plans for managing chronic disease.

At ConvenientMD, we believe primary care doesn’t have to work this way. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to rethink how primary care is delivered.

Known for urgent care, ConvenientMD has expanded into primary care with a model designed around a simple but powerful idea: more time.

More time to listen. More time to understand the full context of a patient’s health. More time to make thoughtful, shared decisions.

Primary care has long been the front door to our health care system; the place where patients build trusted relationships, manage chronic conditions, focus on prevention and navigate an increasingly complex health care landscape. At its best, primary care provides continuity, coordination and the opportunity to address problems before they become crises.

When clinicians have the time they need, care becomes more comprehensive, more personalized and more proactive.

Patients feel heard. Preventive care becomes more attainable. Chronic conditions are managed earlier, often avoiding the costs and complications of emergency department visits or hospitalizations.

This is the promise of value-based care. Rather than rewarding the volume of services delivered, value-based care aligns incentives around what matters most: keeping people healthy, preventing avoidable illness and delivering the right care at the right time.

At ConvenientMD, our Advanced Primary Care model is built around longer appointments (typically 30 to 60 minutes) supported by multi-disciplinary care teams, proactive outreach and population health resources that help identify care gaps before they become larger problems. Care coordination extends beyond the office visit, helping patients navigate referrals, follow-up care and transitions across the health care system.

And by integrating primary care with ConvenientMD’s urgent care network, we can reduce fragmentation while strengthening continuity.

For clinicians, those differences matter just as much as they do for patients. It means more support from care teams, more time for meaningful conversations and fewer incentives to simply move to the next appointment.

In the end, the health care system must create an environment where practitioners can spend less energy working around the system and more energy caring for the people in front of them.