Panel size is easy to measure, easy to compare and almost useless as a planning input on its own. A panel of 1,800 generally healthy adults and a panel of 1,100 patients with multiple chronic conditions are not comparable workloads, yet they are routinely staffed as though they were.
A better unit of account
Weighting the panel by expected contact demand — visits, messages, refills, care coordination time — produces a number that correlates with how the week actually feels. It is more work to compute and far more useful.
- Weight by condition count and severity, not by age band alone.
- Include asynchronous demand; inbox volume is real work.
- Account for language and interpretation needs, which lengthen every encounter.
- Revisit the weights annually — panels drift faster than staffing models do.
Team design follows the weighting
Where a care coordinator pays for itself
In high-complexity panels, the constraint is rarely visit slots. It is the follow-up work between visits. Adding coordination capacity there frees clinician time more effectively than adding appointment capacity.
Where it does not
In a low-complexity panel the same role will spend its time on tasks that could be automated, and the business case will not hold. Staffing models should differ between sites for exactly this reason.
