Why You Need A Primary Care Physician
If you have always been healthy, you may wonder why you need to have a primary care physician. You may only ever have needed medical attention for emergency situations, but that doesn't mean you can skip having a regular doctor. There are many reasons why you should still have a medical professional who has seen you when the situation is not an emergency, and here are a few of them.
After Emergency Care
Most emergency room doctors will tell you to follow up with a primary care physician after you have been treated. A regular doctor will get all the medical files from the emergency room and know what was done and what still needs to be done to ensure a full recovery. If you had a primary care physician before going to the ER, he or she will have a better understanding of your overall medical condition and will be able to customize any further treatment for you instead of giving you generic treatments that may not work the best for your body.
Continuity of Care
When you have a medical professional who has seen you numerous times over the years, he or she will have baseline information on you. Not everyone has the same test results for a given problem, and perhaps you have always had a blood sugar level that is on the high side of normal, but if you haven't, and it is reading high now, it could indicate you are pre-diabetic and need to be treated as such. Only a doctor that has information available gathered over time can accurately determine the best course of treatment, including when to send you to a specialist.
Maintaining Your Health
Because a primary care physician has years of information about you, he or she can see any changes that need to be addressed. Often, finding a problem as it is starting is the best and easiest way to curing it or getting it under control. You may be able to fix things with a few simple lifestyle changes, or with a simple medication. Had you just gone to the ER because you weren't feeling normal, you may end up taking medicines you don't really need or not being treated at all because your test results are still within the normal ranges for most people. What may make you feel bad or "off" may be perfectly normal for others. Unless the doctor has a complete understanding of your medical history there is no way for him or her to know this.
Seeing a primary care physician once a year or so is no big deal when there is nothing wrong. In fact, it helps to build a more complete file on your body and how it works. Make an appointment, have any suggested tests done, and be confident that your state of health is intact and there is nothing happening that could develop into something serious.
For more information, talk with a doctor, such as those at Rural Health Services Consortium Inc..
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