I spend 20 hrs of my week in an outpatient primary care consultation practice---referrals from PCP for eval and treatment recommendations. I see most patients a single time for one hour for eval, and send them back to their PCP with treatment recommendations. A portion I will see back a handful of times if there is a need for further dx clarity or to establish a treatment before handing it back off to the PCP. Rarely I see someone long term---more chronic patients that are too difficult to manage in the primary care setting are referred to a community mental health provider.

I spend about 50% of my patient facing hours seeing new patients, the remainder short term f/u. I'm finding this churn to be pretty taxing.

Thinking about how I might adjust my schedule to be more sustainable. I find f/u visits to be much less taxing, generally, but also expect that more f/u=more pt phone calls, med refill requests, potential crises, etc.

Curious what ratio of new:follow-up other folks in outpatient practice are doing, and how its feeling?