A primary care physician has many benefits. Unlike a specialist, your primary care physician is familiar with your complete medical history and overall health. Your regular visits to your primary care physician will help your primary care physician identify and treat common health conditions, leading to better health outcomes and lower health costs. Listed below are some of these benefits. Read on to learn more about the benefits of having a primary care physician.
Provides Preventive care
The ideal way to provide preventive health in the primary care setting remains debated. Some questions include: what should primary care physicians offer to patients? What types of office visits should they offer? And how often should these services be available? These are just a few of the questions that are being addressed by researchers and policymakers. For more information about primary care and preventive health, visit the American Academy of Pediatrics.
First, you should consider what preventive care includes. Preventive care is care that is provided before the symptom or problem arises. For example, a colonoscopy may be categorized as preventive care if it helps prevent colorectal cancer. A colonoscopy can remove polyps and tissue samples. But the follow-up care that is required to monitor colon health and to treat complications is not covered by a primary care physician. In addition, primary care office visits are only covered when they are related to a specific health need.
Educates patients on healthy lifestyle choices
Education can play an important role in the prevention and treatment of many conditions. Early detection of disease can lead to simpler lifestyle changes and lower costs than high acuity mitigation measures. Thus, healthcare organizations must educate patients on screening and preventive measures for early detection of diseases. To reach this goal, they use a combination of marketing strategies including email marketing lists and websites. Listed below are some of these techniques:
Patient education can help patients manage chronic diseases such as diabetes. They need to know how to control their blood sugar levels and how to use health information technology. These patients also need education on managing their lifestyle needs. Research has shown that patients with poor health literacy are more likely to become hospitalized and die from cardiovascular complications. The Mayo Clinic studied heart failure patients to determine the effect of low health literacy on hospitalization rates and mortality.
Identifies and treats Common Medical conditions
There are a variety of different ways that a health care professional diagnoses and treats common medical conditions. Most medical professionals use laboratory tests, physical examination, and psychological evaluation to make the diagnosis. Common tests include mammography, an X-ray of the breasts to check for breast cancer, echocardiography (uses ultrasound waves to check the heart), colonoscopy, which examines the colon, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which creates images of internal organs.
Refers patients to specialists
In the past, many primary care physicians chose specialists for their patients based on the assumption that different doctors would provide different quality of care. Today, that relationship has changed and physicians must consider fewer factors, including their own familiarity with specialists. Listed below are the most common factors used by physicians when choosing specialists for their patients. Identifying these factors will help physicians improve the referral process. They will also help physicians determine which specialists are the best fit for which patients.
A primary care physician may also refer patients to a specialist if a patient is suffering from a problem that is complicated or outside his or her expertise. While there are several reasons for this referral process, Roberts says that PCPs should keep up with the doctors their patients see and always let the specialist know of any preferences. A patient’s insurance policy may limit the specialists to whom a patient can be referred. If your patient’s insurer has restrictions regarding the types of specialists a physician can refer, appeal to have the referral canceled.