America’s healthcare system faces a critical challenge—there aren’t enough specialists to meet current demand, and the future looks bleak. Neurology, a field encompassing life-altering diseases like Parkinson’s, MS, epilepsy, and stroke, highlights this crisis acutely. The national shortage of neurologists is predicted to worsen significantly, with dire consequences for patient access, timely diagnosis, and overall healthcare efficiency. These challenges don’t stop at neurology; they ripple across many specialties.
But there’s light on the horizon. By leveraging the power of telemedicine and innovative communication solutions like DocSide, we can fundamentally reshape how primary care physicians (PCPs) and specialists work together, closing dangerous gaps while maximizing limited resources. Before we unpack DocSide’s role in this solution, it’s important to understand the gravity of the problem.
The Data Doesn’t Lie—America’s Shortage Is Real
Demand for neurologists is outpacing supply. National forecasts predict a severe neurologist deficit, primarily driven by the aging population. By 2025, general neurology is expected to experience the steepest supply drop as more neurologists subspecialize, leaving fewer physicians to manage widespread chronic neurological conditions. To put it bluntly, time is running out for a generation of patients pushing the limits of the existing system.
For patients, the consequences can feel catastrophic. On average, the wait time to see an adult neurologist is 34.8 business days. If you think that’s bad, pediatric neurology waits stretch even longer, averaging 45 days. For many, those delays risk exacerbating conditions or delaying critical treatment.
At an institutional level, the numbers are equally telling. The Geisinger Neuroscience Institute, serving more than two million patients across rural Pennsylvania, serves as a microcosm of the national problem. Between 2015 and 2019, the demand for neurology care at Geisinger exceeded their clinical capacity. Geisinger introduced “Ask-a-Doc (AAD),” a forward-thinking electronic consult system designed to bridge communication between PCPs and neurologists to address the logjam.
The Results:
- Over four years, the system tracked 3,190 AAD messages.
- 92% of these queries were handled without requiring an in-person visit.
- The use of AAD surged by 300% as PCPs and neurologists increasingly embraced the system.
Perhaps even more striking—nearly half of the patients who sent queries through AAD (45%) avoided in-office referrals altogether. That translates to 1,743 outpatient neurology slots freed up for patients with complex or urgent needs. With a nationwide problem this entrenched, it’s worth thinking more broadly about collaboration systems like this.
Why Shortages Hit Rural Areas Harder
Patients in rural locations feel the pain of these shortages even more acutely. Neurologists, like many specialists, tend to cluster near large metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, rural America relies on generalist PCPs to fill the gap where specialty care is sparse to non-existent.
Before implementing AAD, Geisinger regularly saw patients driving hours for an in-person neurology appointment—sometimes just for routine consults or diagnostic clarifications that didn’t require face-to-face time. This trend is consistent across healthcare statistics, where rural patients spend significantly more time and money accessing specialty care compared to their urban counterparts.
It’s not only wasteful but discouraging. For the elderly, frail, or those managing ongoing neurological conditions, this burden can be overwhelming. And guess what? Unnecessary delays in specialty access impact everyone. Even patients in cities experience longer wait times when neurologists are overburdened by patients who might not need in-person follow-ups in the first place.
What neurology patients face now is only a sneak preview for the next wave of specialists predicted to buckle under similar patient loads. Specialties like endocrinology, cardiology, and urology are likely headed for their own workforce reckoning in the coming years.
The Inefficiency Spiral
The traditional model of PCP-specialist communication often wastes precious time. Before an e-consult system like AAD entered Geisinger’s toolkit, PCPs often needed to call specialists directly or rely on fragmented emails or notes—neither of which were particularly timely or reliable. Even with straightforward cases, miscommunication, unnecessary in-person referrals, and inappropriate testing contributed to overwhelm. According to collected feedback, PCPs themselves often recognized that up to 30% of their specialist referrals weren’t medically necessary. And yet, no practical alternative existed.
Simply put, the system was begging for innovation.
Enter DocSide.
How DocSide Shifts the Game
At its core, DocSide exists to shrink the vast chasm between what medicine needs and what current systems provide. Inspired by successful programs like AAD, DocSide’s robust platform goes far beyond patching broken communication; it reimagines what’s possible when tech-powered efficiency meets human caregiving.
Building on lessons from Geisinger, DocSide offers PCPs direct, timely access to specialists through an intuitive asynchronous platform. Here’s how we’re taking these innovations to new heights:
1. Streamlining the Referral Process
Through DocSide, PCPs can access an electronic portal pre-populated with relevant patient data. Whether the issue requires a neurologist’s input or insights from a cardiologist, referrals become smarter, faster, and vastly less resource-intensive.
Instead of a time-consuming phone call or tedious back-and-forth emails, cases can be securely routed to the appropriate specialist in mere minutes.
2. Expanding Expertise Across Every Specialty
While AAD demonstrated extraordinary success in addressing neurology shortages, the model’s principles are scalable to other overburdened fields. Cardiologists, endocrinologists, gastroenterologists—all can benefit from the efficiencies DocSide brings. At its best, DocSide becomes the digital glue binding the fractured domains of primary and specialty care into one cohesive network.
3. Preventing Unnecessary Referrals
Roughly 45% of consults through AAD didn’t lead to follow-up office visits, proving that many cases can be resolved through virtual communications. That unlocked physical clinic availability for patients who’d otherwise have waited months. Multiply this across nationwide practices, and the unlocked capacity is game-changing.
4. Improving Patient Experience and Equity
Every patient deserves timely care and a system that works in their favor, not against them. DocSide’s technology eliminates the barriers requiring patients to travel long distances unnecessarily. By keeping care accessible and local, even underserved rural populations gain a fighting chance for adequate healthcare.
5. Enhancing Specialist Time Efficiency
Forget repetitive paper trails. With DocSide’s features designed for seamless documentation, specialists spend less time shuffling notes and more time doing what they are trained to do—providing expert care where it’s needed most.
6. Integrated Ratings for Quality Assurance
Tools like DocSide elevate the entire patient-provider system by integrating quick feedback. When platforms facilitate excellent collaboration, everybody wins.
Why Now?
Here’s the bottom line—every day we hesitate to adopt solutions like DocSide is another day patients face avoidable suffering. The healthcare system will not magically create more specialists overnight. What we can do—right here, right now—is implement smarter workflows, opening the door for scalable innovations.
Geisinger’s AAD showed us the path. Now, it’s time to move further, faster, and expand that vision nationally.
The numbers speak for themselves. By bringing e-consults into mainstream healthcare, we achieve dual victories in efficiency and compassion. More patients get the care they need sooner, without wasting providers’ or patients’ time. Specialists can focus more acutely on complex cases that demand their expertise rather than running out the clock on solvable but preventable inefficiencies.
With DocSide, healthcare doesn’t just adapt to change. It leads it.
