If you are like the average working age adult, you will make an average of 3.9 visits to a medical provider this year. But who will you see? Will you see a different provider for each and every visit, or will you choose to see the same doctor? While it may sometimes be faster to book an appointment with a wide variety of providers, you may not be receiving the same benefits you can get from having a primary care provider. Understanding some of these benefits may help to motivate you to find the right doctor to provide your care.
A Primary Care Physician Will Offer You Coordinated Care
If you are seeking your health care services from a wide variety of providers, you have records in each of these locations. They are each doing examinations, running tests, ordering medications, and more without anyone really having oversight of the entire process. This type of service delivery not only results in a duplication of many of these services, but it could also put you at risk of having conflicting medical opinions, and adverse medication reactions.
When you have a primary care physician, they will often function as a general practitioner or a family physician. They will not only perform the majority of your medical services, but they will offer you coordinated care if you need services outside of their practice. This means that all of your consultations, test results, and copies of your records all come back to one centralized location. This creates a more streamlined process and allows your primary care physician to oversee your care.
A Primary Care Provider Will Know Your Medical History
Many diseases and health conditions are hereditary or genetic in nature. These conditions may also be a result your behavior, culture, or your environments that you share with your family. When you have a primary care physician, they will take a full family history that will take all of these factors into consideration. This information can help them to make various decisions pertaining to your care. Some of these are:
In addition to these, knowing your medical history will also help your physician identify signs and symptoms of genetic conditions you may have, as well as provide you with education on what signs and symptoms you should be looking for.
A Primary Care Doctor Can Often Save You Money On Your Medical Care
Most health insurance policies require you to pick up a portion of your medical costs. In addition to any premiums that you may pay to keep the policy in force, you may also have to pay deductibles and co-pays for services rendered. When your primary care doctor is able to streamline the number of tests and other services you need, this means you will not incur as many of these costs.
In addition to this, some insurance programs will often offer you a less expensive co-pay for your office visits with your identified primary care physician than they will for other medical providers. This will allow you to seek preventative, as well as needed medical care services at a discount.
A Primary Care Doctor May Limit The Number Of Doctors You Need In Life
It used to be that once you had a doctor, you were able to stay with this physician for many years. As the medical models have changed throughout the years, this has become far less common. Primary care physicians are resurrecting this practice.
Many of these physicians are trained to be able to treat the young and the old and everybody in between. This means that once you find a primary care physician that you feel comfortable with, you will be able to develop a relationship that hopefully will last for years to come.
While you still may need to seek other types of services in the case of an emergency, you will find that a primary care doctor will be able to meet most of your healthcare needs. If they are not able to, they will have no problem referring you out to a specialist, but you can rest assure that they will know what that specialist has to say, maybe even before you will. If you're interested in finding a primary care physician, click here for more info.
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