Average Patient Turnover Rate: 2026 Report
- Adrian Mustain
- Aug 11, 2025
- 5 min read
Patient turnover in U.S. healthcare encompasses two compounding trends: patients leaving their providers and physicians departing their practices. Thirty-six percent of patients left their healthcare provider in the last two years, while annual physician turnover rates climbed from 5.3% in 2010 to 7.6% by 2018. Together, these patterns disrupt care continuity, generate excess healthcare costs, and reduce patient experience ratings across primary care and specialty settings.
This report draws from peer-reviewed studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and Mayo Clinic Proceedings, MGMA practice management data, NSI Nursing Solutions' 2026 staffing report, and patient retention analysis. It examines patient churn rates, physician departure trends, financial consequences, and healthcare staff turnover patterns.
What You'll Learn in This Report
Patient Churn Rates:Â How frequently patients leave healthcare providers and why
Long-Term Patient Retention:Â How many patients stay with their original physician over time
Physician Turnover Rates:Â Annual departure rates by specialty and setting
Financial Impact:Â Excess healthcare costs generated by provider turnover
Healthcare Staff Turnover:Â Workforce attrition across healthcare roles
Care Quality Impact: How provider turnover affects patient experience ratings
Patient Churn and Provider Attrition Rates
More than one in three patients changed healthcare providers within the past two years, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with access, communication, and care quality across U.S. medical practices.
The table below shows patient retention patterns over time, illustrating how provider relationships erode across multiple years of care.
Reasons for patient departure span clinical and operational factors. The table below identifies the most commonly cited drivers of patient churn across healthcare settings.
Patient retention statistics from Etactics 2024 analysis of healthcare churn data. PCP turnover patient impact data from a PubMed Central peer-reviewed study examining 9% annual patient PCP displacement rate.
Key Findings:
More than half of patients no longer see their original physician after five years: The 43% five-year retention rate indicates that provider continuity across a typical chronic disease management period is the exception rather than the rule, with the majority of long-term patient relationships disrupted by practice changes, insurance shifts, or physician departures.
One in eleven patients faces involuntary provider loss annually through PCP turnover:Â The 9% annual patient PCP displacement rate reflects the downstream consequence of physician career transitions, practice closures, and burnout-driven departures on established patient panels.
Access barriers and care quality perception drive voluntary patient departure:Â Long wait times and rushed visits represent controllable practice management factors that account for a substantial share of the 36% two-year churn rate, indicating operational improvements may reduce preventable patient attrition.
Physician Turnover Rates by Setting
Physician departure rates have trended upward over the past decade, with burnout, compensation pressures, and administrative burden identified as primary drivers in recent research.
Annual physician turnover rates rose steadily between 2010 and 2018 before accelerating with pandemic-era workforce disruptions. The table below tracks this progression across the national physician workforce.
Turnover rates vary by physician burnout status and clinical setting. The table below compares departure rates between burned-out and non-burned-out primary care physicians over a two-year period.
Annual turnover rates from the Annals of Internal Medicine physician turnover study covering 2010 to 2018, using Medicare claims methodology. Burnout departure data from Mayo Clinic Proceedings analysis of PCP departure rates by burnout status.
Key Findings:
Hospital medicine physician turnover of 10.9% exceeds the national average by more than 40%: The elevated departure rate in hospital medicine reflects scheduling intensity, shift-based work models, and limited patient continuity that characterize inpatient practice, creating recruitment and retention challenges distinct from outpatient settings.
Burnout nearly doubles the likelihood of physician departure within two years: The 9.22% departure rate among burned-out PCPs versus 5.27% for non-burned-out physicians demonstrates that burnout functions as a leading predictor of workforce attrition, with approximately 5,377 departures per year attributable directly to burnout-driven career exits.
Physician turnover rates increased 43% over eight years without substantial reversal:Â The steady climb from 5.3% in 2010 to 7.6% in 2018 reflects structural workforce pressures that pre-dated the pandemic, suggesting current departure rates likely remain elevated or have increased further given post-pandemic burnout intensification.
Financial and Care Quality Impact of Provider Turnover
Physician turnover generates measurable financial costs for healthcare payers and practices while producing demonstrable declines in patient experience ratings.
The care quality consequences of provider turnover extend beyond financial metrics. Research examining patient experience ratings identifies consistent declines across multiple care domains following PCP changes.
Financial impact data from Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a peer-reviewed analysis of healthcare expenditures attributable to PCP turnover across public and private payer categories. Care quality impact from a PubMed Central study examining patient experience ratings before and after PCP turnover events.
Key Findings:
PCP turnover costs the healthcare system nearly $1 billion annually in excess expenditures:Â The $979 million in preventable spending reflects duplicate testing, care gaps, and coordination failures that occur when patients lose established provider relationships, representing a measurable return-on-investment case for physician retention programs.
Patient experience declines across every measured domain following provider turnover: The consistent deterioration in communication, coordination, and overall care ratings after PCP changes demonstrates that provider continuity functions as a foundational quality metric beyond its role in operational efficiency.
Replacement cost per departing physician can exceed $1 million when accounting for recruitment and onboarding: The total cost of physician replacement spans recruitment fees, locum tenens coverage, credentialing delays, and productivity ramp-up periods, making retention investment substantially more economical than replacement.
Healthcare Staff Turnover Rates
Broader healthcare workforce turnover extends beyond physicians to encompass nursing, administrative, and allied health professionals across practice settings.
Medical practices reported more stable staff turnover conditions heading into 2026, though nearly one-third still faced worsening attrition. The table below reflects MGMA polling data from late 2025 on current practice-level trends.
Healthcare worker turnover rates from NSI Nursing Solutions 2026 National Health Care Retention and RN Staffing Report and The Resource 2025 healthcare turnover analysis. Practice trend data from the MGMA Stat poll of medical group respondents in 2025.
Key Findings:
Certified nursing assistants face the highest turnover rate in healthcare at 27.8%: The CNA turnover rate nearly matches the total annual healthcare worker average and reflects compensation constraints, physical demands, and limited advancement pathways that create chronic staffing instability in long-term care and hospital support roles.
70% of medical practices report stable or improving staff turnover entering 2026:Â The MGMA data suggests that workforce stabilization efforts implemented following 2021 to 2022 peak attrition have produced measurable results in most practices, though the 29% still experiencing increases indicate that retention challenges remain unresolved in a significant minority of settings.
Advanced practice providers and allied health professionals consistently maintain below-average turnover:Â The sustained multi-year pattern of lower attrition among these roles compared to hospital-wide averages suggests that scope of practice, compensation equity, and career development pathways in these disciplines produce stronger retention outcomes than nursing and support staff categories.
Sources
Etactics
45+ patient retention and churn rate statistics, including 36% leaving providers in two years
PubMed Central (National Library of Medicine)
Effect of primary care provider turnover on patient experience ratings (9% PCP turnover rate)
Mayo Clinic Proceedings (ScienceDirect)
Health care expenditures attributable to primary care physician turnover ($979 million annually)
Annals of Internal Medicine
Physician turnover rates in the United States 2010 to 2018 (5.3% to 7.6% annual increase)
Weill Cornell Medicine
Physician turnover trend analysis using new methodology (2010 to 2018 data)
PubMed Central (National Library of Medicine)
Estimating costs of physician turnover in hospital medicine (10.9% mean turnover rate)
Medical Group Management Association (MGMA)
Staff turnover trends in medical practices heading into 2026
NSI Nursing Solutions
2026 National Health Care Retention and RN Staffing Report
The Resource
Average turnover rate in healthcare, 2025 data (22.7% across all healthcare workers)
The Permanente Journal
New national study on drivers of early physician departure from clinical practice (2026)