Navigating Women’s Health

Women’s healthcare is at a turning point. Despite advances in medicine, many women today face long wait times, limited access to doctors, and rushed medical visits that fail to address their unique health needs. Instead of focusing on preventing illness, the system often reacts only after problems appear.

Starting in their 30s, women deal with unique health challenges—hormonal changes, reproductive health, menopause, and a higher risk of chronic diseases like autoimmune disorders and heart disease. Yet, the traditional healthcare system often falls short in meeting these needs.

Concierge medicine offers a better option. It gives women direct access to a trusted doctor, longer visits, and a proactive approach to staying healthy. With the healthcare system becoming more strained, choosing a concierge doctor today could be one of the most important health decisions a woman makes to ensure her continued health tomorrow.

The demand for healthcare in the U.S. is rising, but the number of doctors isn’t keeping up. The American Association of Medical Colleges has projected that by 2036, there will be a deficit of 86,000 doctors in the U.S. At the same time, our population is aging, which means that demand will be increased on an already overwhelmed system (The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand: Projections from 2021–2036. GlobalData Plc, Mar. 2024. Prepared for the Association of American Medical Colleges. (AAMC, 2023). This means that traditional healthcare will become even more crowded, making it harder for women to get timely care.

Getting an appointment with a primary care doctor can take weeks, and seeing a specialist may take months. For busy women balancing work, family, and personal well-being, these delays can worsen health problems. In urgent situations, women often end up in urgent care or emergency rooms, where doctors don’t know their medical history. If they are able to get an appointment with their practice, some might be surprised to find out that while they thought they had set up an appointment with a doctor, the person actually treating them is a Physician Assistant (PA) or Nurse Practitioner (NP). After waiting a long time in the office to be seen, many just don’t have the energy left to protest what has just happened.

Doctors in traditional practices often have only 10–15 minutes to spend on each patient per visit. There’s barely enough time to treat symptoms, let alone discuss long-term wellness, mental health, or lifestyle factors. Many more complex health issues that affect women, like autoimmune diseases, hormonal imbalances, and chronic pain, are often overlooked or misdiagnosed. Unfortunately, this is part of the reason that women are often passed from one specialist to another without ever getting the resolution they need.

The current system focuses on treating illness after it appears, instead of preventing it. Many life-threatening conditions could be avoided with early detection, lifestyle changes, and regular check-ups. However, insurance-driven healthcare often doesn’t cover enough preventive services. Important preventive services, early screenings, and wellness planning often go uncovered or underutilized. As a result, women miss out on critical opportunities to protect their long-term health (Levine S, Malone E, Lekiachvili A, Briss P. Health Care Industry Insights: Why the Use of Preventive Services Is Still Low. Prev Chronic Dis 2019;16:180625. DOI: as cited by the CDC,(CDC, 2019).