Across Massachusetts, patients are navigating waiting lists that stretch weeks, practices closed to new patients, and visits that feel more like a transaction than a conversation. More South Shore patients are deciding they do not have to accept it.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from being sick, but from not being believed about it. For too many women, that exhaustion is familiar. Here is what the data says about why it happens — and what a different model of care actually changes.