PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. \u2014 Finding a primary care doctor on the Treasure Coast can mean waiting months or even longer for an appointment.<\/p>\n
A check of five doctors’ offices on the Treasure Coast found wait times ranging from a couple of weeks to five months, and one office could not schedule an appointment until next year.<\/p>\n
WATCH WPTV’S COVERAGE BELOW:<\/p>\n
Treasure Coast hospitals open simulation labs to tackle growing primary care doctor shortage<\/p>\n
HCA Florida’s St. Lucie and Lawnwood hospitals are finding innovative ways to address the shortage. They’ve opened new simulation labs designed to train and retain doctors in the region.<\/p>\n
Inside the simulation lab at HCA Hospital in Port St. Lucie, residents like Dr. Cody Steed practice procedures on a mannequin, a lifelike training tool equipped with a heartbeat and detectable pulses.<\/p>\n
“It has a heartbeat. You can actually feel pulses in it,” Dr. Steed said.<\/p>\n
Steed said the lab allows residents to sharpen their abilities without risk to real patients.<\/p>\n
“You can really test your skills and test your knowledge and you can identify areas of lapse,” Dr. Steed said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Lindsay Lewis, who runs the Family Medicine Residency Program, said the physician shortage is a deep-rooted problem with no quick solution.<\/p>\n
“The lack of primary care is a systematic issue that’s going to take years to try to get ahead of and on top of, unfortunately,” Lewis said.<\/p>\n
Lewis said healthcare professionals are also contending with burnout and insurance struggles, compounding the challenge of reducing wait times.<\/p>\n
“Patient wait times if you’re going to different areas can be six months to a year,” Lewis said.<\/p>\n
Lewis said the shortage will not be resolved overnight, but she believes innovative training tools can help recruit and keep doctors in the area.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to help retain the physicians when they see that the companies here are actually able to support their physicians,” Lewis said.<\/p>\n
Portions of this story were assisted by artificial intelligence tools and reviewed by a WPTV journalist to ensure accuracy, clarity, and adherence to editorial standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. \u2014 Finding a primary care doctor on the Treasure Coast can mean waiting months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[87642,87645,3381,63481,87646,171,173,172,87643,179,87644],"class_list":["post-186593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-doctor-shortage","tag-family-medicine-residency","tag-hca-florida-lawnwood-hospital","tag-hca-florida-st-lucie-hospital","tag-medical-simulation-lab","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-primary-care-doctor-shortage","tag-treasure-coast","tag-treasure-coast-doctor-wait-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}