About MediCita

Puerto Rico faces a documented crisis in access to medical specialists.

A 2021 study by the Puerto Rico College of Physicians and Surgeons found that the island lost approximately 15,000 doctors in the previous decade, leaving around 9,000 active doctors for a population of more than 3.2 million people. The College estimates that between 365 and 500 doctors leave each year. Data from the American Medical Association (AMA) shows that 47% of active physicians in Puerto Rico are over 60 years old. Of the island's 78 municipalities, 37 are federally designated health professional shortage areas, including San Juan and Ponce. A study by FTI Consulting commissioned by the Fiscal Oversight Board confirmed the magnitude of this crisis in February 2025.

Entire specialties have been devastated. Cardiologists fell from approximately 400 to 150 in five years. Anesthesiologists from 300 to 100. Waits to see a specialist can stretch up to 9 months.

This shortage has produced a visible adaptation: a growing number of specialists have stopped accepting health insurance, or stopped accepting credit cards, or both. Cash-only practices are increasingly common. It is not illegal. It is the rational response of providers whose insurers pay late, pay partially, or simply do not pay.

For patients, this means the question "do you accept my plan?" is no longer enough. You need to know: do you accept my plan, do you accept cards, and do you have availability? Existing directories do not answer any of these questions reliably.

Health plan directories in Puerto Rico are "ghost networks": lists full of doctors who moved, retired, stopped accepting the plan, or closed their practice, but who keep appearing because no one audits the listings against reality. There is no single reliable registry that a patient can consult.

MediCita is an independent directory that collects information from federal registries, insurer directories, and other public sources. We cross-check these sources to generate freshness signals that indicate how recent and corroborated each provider's information is.

We do not verify medical credentials. We do not recommend doctors. We do not schedule appointments. We organize public activity signals so you can evaluate whether it is worth calling.