Dr. Hannah Shadowen led a recent VCU study looking into the problem published in 2025.<\/a><\/p>\nThey found 44% of all neighborhoods in the Commonwealth don’t have enough physicians to care for the people who live there. That affects nearly 3.8 million Virginians.<\/p>\n
“I found that there are not enough primary care doctors in general. And then specifically in rural communities,” Shadowen said.<\/p>\n
Shadowen outlined the shortage with a heat map of Virginia.<\/p>\n
![\"PCP](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5834c755-9fa7-45fc-9be1-8f9b5b41cfcb-heatmap.png\"\/)
PCP shortage heat map in Virginia (VCU Health).<\/p>\n
Sloan Albert, Chief Operating Officer at Centra, said it\u2019s an obstacle for their health care system.<\/p>\n
“It is a two-pronged problem. There aren’t enough (doctors) out there, particularly in certain specialties,” Albert said. “But I think the other is finding physicians that want to work in a rural environment.”<\/p>\n
![\"Centra's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/25f0ded4-ac2e-4bd2-bdfc-90f875bd59e9-centra.jpeg\"\/)
Centra’s COO discussing the doctor shortage and what the health care system is doing to hire doctors (Photo: ABC 13).<\/p>\n
Dr. Krist points to burnout, retirement and growing demand in healthcare as factors also putting a strain on the number of doctors available.<\/p>\n
“So we have more people and the physician workforce hasn’t kept up with that,” Krist said. “So, I’ve been at my practice now 30 years. I’m a family doctor. I started out seeing young folks, and a lot of my patients have aged with me, and my community is older now too, as well. So we have a lot more folks who are living longer and healthier lives. But that also means that they have more medical needs as well. So there’s more need for medical services in many communities than there used to be.”<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, there\u2019s no perfect workaround for everyone. If you can\u2019t wait to see a doctor, you may have to shop around out of the area.<\/p>\n
Barnes ended up having to travel to UVA Health in Charlottesville for her testing.<\/p>\n
They were able to get her an appointment in days rather than months.<\/p>\n
Doctors diagnosed her with pulmonary fibrosis.<\/p>\n
“It won’t get better, but at least they can start doing things the right way,” Barnes said.<\/p>\n
The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates by 2032, the United States will be short by more than 55,000 primary care physicians.<\/p>\n
Dr. Krist is working on ways to solve that deficit.<\/p>\n
“I think some ways are to try and encourage more physicians to pursue primary care. As a discipline as opposed to specialty,” Krist said. “Then trying to help reduce burnout and help physicians practice better so that they’re happier and stay in practice longer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) \u2014 Getting in to see a doctor without a painful wait time is harder and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-437977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Wendy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/626e07d7-b4a5-45aa-80f1-70f442bacf2b-patient.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/c0aca0b4-f5da-478a-ab5a-50aa1eefe589-VCUDr.Krist.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"(Robert](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ae72f25c-fe55-4f2d-9774-f390728744b6-doctorshortage07.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n