27.0% of medical practice leaders name patient no-shows as their top access problem for 2026, according to a Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Stat poll of 236 practices fielded December 9, 2025. Online scheduling gaps rank second at 24.0%, phone access third at 22.0%, and new-patient wait times fourth at 21.0%, with 5.0% citing something else entirely.
The four leading answers sit within 6 percentage points of each other. No single fix clears a practice's access backlog. A front desk that solves phones without touching online scheduling still loses the patients who wanted to book at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. A practice that adds scheduling software without addressing phone volume still ties up staff on calls that a working portal should have absorbed.
For a billing manager or practice administrator building a 2026 budget, that spread matters more than any single number on the list. A tight cluster of four priorities means a single new hire or a single software purchase rarely moves more than one line on the access scoreboard. The data below breaks each priority down into the underlying volume, so a practice can see which line its own numbers resemble before it decides where the next dollar goes.
What Practice Leaders Are Prioritizing
MGMA's poll asked practice leaders to pick the single biggest access priority for 2026 from a list of options. The full breakdown:
| Access priority | Share naming it top priority |
|---|---|
| No-shows | 27.0% |
| Online scheduling | 24.0% |
| Phone access | 22.0% |
| New-patient wait times | 21.0% |
| Other | 5.0% |
Source: MGMA Stat poll, 236 applicable responses, fielded December 9, 2025.
No-shows taking the top spot lines up with a separate trend already showing on the schedule: a later 2026 MGMA Stat poll found 32.0% of medical groups reported higher no-show rates than the year before, versus 10.0% reporting improvement. A practice ranking no-shows as its top 2026 priority is reacting to a number that was already moving against it.
Why Phones Still Eat the Day
Phone access ranked third among top priorities, but a separate MGMA Stat poll of 294 practices, fielded March 10, 2026, shows why the phone line absorbs so much staff time in the first place. Eligibility checks and prior authorization calls took up 45.0% of front-desk phone time, more than any other task. Scheduling followed at 31.0%, intake calls at 9.0%, prescription refill requests at 6.0%, and everything else at 9.0%.
| Phone task | Share of front-desk phone time |
|---|---|
| Eligibility / prior authorization | 45.0% |
| Scheduling | 31.0% |
| Intake | 9.0% |
| Prescription refills | 6.0% |
| Other | 9.0% |
Source: MGMA Stat poll, 294 applicable responses, fielded March 10, 2026.
Eligibility and prior authorization calls outweigh scheduling calls by 14 percentage points, which means a practice that routes scheduling to an online portal still leaves the largest single block of phone time untouched. The same MGMA report notes that nearly half of physicians work with an incompletely staffed front-desk team more than a quarter of the time, so the calls that do come in often reach a smaller team than the volume assumes.
The Online Scheduling Gap Behind the Second-Place Ranking
Online scheduling ranked as the second most common top priority at 24.0%, and an earlier MGMA Stat poll shows the size of the gap it points to. Fielded July 29, 2025 among 244 practices, that poll found 71.0% of practices have fewer than 25.0% of their patients using digital tools to self-schedule an appointment. Only 21.0% of practices have between 25.0% and 50.0% of patients scheduling digitally, 5.0% have 51.0% to 75.0%, and just 3.0% have more than 75.0% of patients booking online.
| Share of patients self-scheduling digitally | Share of practices at that level |
|---|---|
| Under 25% | 71.0% |
| 25% to 50% | 21.0% |
| 51% to 75% | 5.0% |
| Over 75% | 3.0% |
Source: MGMA Stat poll, 244 applicable responses, fielded July 29, 2025.
Put the two figures together: 71.0% of practices have low digital scheduling adoption, and 31.0% of front-desk phone time still goes to scheduling calls. A practice with a portal that patients do not use keeps paying for phone-based scheduling anyway, on top of the software cost. Only 8.0% of practices in the July 2025 poll had more than half of their patients scheduling online, which means the practices at the top end of that range are still a small minority rather than a preview of where most of the industry already sits.
Reading the Four Priorities as One Problem
Taken separately, 27.0% on no-shows, 24.0% on online scheduling, 22.0% on phone access, and 21.0% on wait times look like four different projects competing for the same budget. Taken together, they describe one funnel: a patient tries to reach the practice by phone or portal (phone access, online scheduling), waits for an opening (wait times), and then may or may not show up (no-shows). A gap at any point in that funnel shows up as a different-looking statistic depending on where a practice leader is standing when they measure it.
The MGMA data suggests where the biggest gains sit. Eligibility and prior-authorization calls at 45.0% of phone time and low digital adoption at 71.0% of practices are both upstream of the no-show and wait-time numbers that practices rank as their top concern. A call routed away from a live person, or a prior-authorization check moved off the phone entirely, frees front-desk capacity for the scheduling and confirmation work tied to no-shows and wait times further down the funnel.
None of the four MGMA polls cited here measured the same practices twice, so the figures describe an industry pattern rather than one clinic's before-and-after. Still, the four numbers line up in a consistent order: the biggest volume driver on the phone (eligibility and prior authorization at 45.0%) sits closest to the two access priorities that ranked lowest on the list (phone access at 22.0% and wait times at 21.0%), while the biggest reported priority (no-shows at 27.0%) sits furthest downstream, at the end of the funnel where every upstream delay eventually lands. A practice manager reviewing next year's budget can use that order as a rough sequence: fix the call volume driver first, and the downstream numbers move on their own before a single dollar goes toward a no-show-specific tool.
Sources
- MGMA, "Patient access priorities for 2026: Tackling wait times, phones, no-shows and more," poll fielded Dec. 9, 2025
- MGMA, "About 1 in 3 medical groups see higher no-shows in 2026 as patients face higher costs," poll fielded Aug. 11, 2026
- MGMA, "Phones are still a bottleneck costing medical practices time they can't afford," poll fielded March 10, 2026
- MGMA, "Meeting the competitive pressure on patient digital self-scheduling," poll fielded July 29, 2025
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