I live rural, so that's been going on a while, and to make matters worse they're closing hospitals as well as pharmacies. The 6 month wait is the standard if not on the shorter side for most specialities, and just to be seen by an endodontist or psychiatrist locally is a 2 year long waiting list for the former, and 4 years for the latter, and that's the wait for people with good insurance, people with standard or medicaid/care go without, or have to travel 2-3 hrs one way just to be seen. Because of the years long waiting lists local places refuse to take new patients.

Walgreens closed down last year and Riteaid is closing locations nationwide, which leaves a lot of the near towns with no pharmacies outside of Walmart, if lucky. For example, coworker of mine is both of the age and broke enough to qualify for medicare, she can only pick up medicines when she comes in to work now, which is a 40min drive for her. What few locally owned pharmacies we had had have long closed. I looked at vitamins at one of the closing Rite Aids and was stunned by some of the prices with 40% off, even vs GNC.

At a residency clinic, as a non new medicaid/uninsured patient its over 3 months to be seen for an appointment, so I end up going to urgent care for everything and never following up generally. I had a sinus infection in December that didn't get fully addressed until May. Ironically, the residency clinic was and is one of the quickest places (best reviewed too) to be seen outside urgent cares or places that only accept good private insurance. Tbf understandable no one wants to be a guinea pig, especially for first years, who tend to have a rough touch and are awkward. Since covid19 the residents are getting btfo by terminal burnout faster and quit, so I get a lot of letters informing me 'Dr. FirstorSecondyear left for other ventures, now you have Dr. OtherFirstorSecondyear as your primary care physician', only to receive another letter a few months or even weeks later. This used to be a much rarer event, tbh I don't even know what stressed AF resident is assigned to me right now.

I've been eying those remote scribe jobs I've seen online in attempting to leave retail, my sister who does something with medical claims says it isn't a good idea right now since she expects a rural-like collapse to happen nationwide. She's noted a lot of places have older medical professionals retiring/moving away and medical facilities are opting to go without replacement. When covid19 hit many medical workers left and also weren't replaced.