Seeing a family doctor has many benefits for your overall health and the health of your family. In fact, studies show that having a doctor who oversees all areas of one’s health has many benefits. Lower death rates, improved patient trust with their provider, higher patient satisfaction, and overall better health are just some of these benefits.
While there might be many reasons why this is true, here are our top seven reasons:
Family Doctors Provide a Variety of Services
Having a primary care physician means more than just having a doctor give you a yearly check-up. They can do that, but they also provide so much more than that as well.
When you fall ill with a relatively minor sickness, they can prescribe medications. If you have chronic conditions such as diabetes or high cholesterol, your doctor can formulate a plan to help you manage them.
In addition, your family doctor can actually improve your overall health by holding you accountable for your choices. This can include accountability with weight management, healthy eating decisions, exercise, sleep, mental health, smoking cessation, alcohol consumption, and stress management. By partnering with your doctor, you are much more likely to be successful in maintaining healthy balances in these areas.
Primary Care for the Entire Family
Not only can a family doctor care for you, but they can also provide these services and care for your entire family. When your family receives care from one primary care physician’s office, this allows your doctor to get a better picture of the overall health of your entire family.
This applies to chronic conditions along with acute illnesses such as strep throat. For example, your children are diagnosed with strep throat and you are not feeling 100% either. Your family doctor can quickly diagnose and prescribe medicines for all of you.
Here at AllCare, we are passionate about providing care for your entire family. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we named our company AllCare in the first place. We want our AllCare family to take care of your family! We treat patients of all ages.
A Doctor That Can Treat You Throughout Your Life
Because a family doctor is able to provide care for various ages, they can continue to treat you throughout your lifetime. It is not uncommon for a family doctor to see patients for many years or even decades.
At AllCare, we treat patients for their entire life cycle. We love meeting and caring for your newborns. In addition, we care for toddlers, children, and teens as if they were our own children. We also treat young adults just starting their independent medical journey apart from dad and mom. Soon-to-be-pregnant or newly pregnant mothers, middle-aged adults, and retirees are all welcome at AllCare. It is our desire to treat your entire family, regardless of your age or health needs.
Family Doctors Can Really Understand Your Medical History
By seeing a family doctor on a consistent basis, your doctor is able to get a clearer picture of your medical history along with the medical history of your family. This allows the doctor to monitor certain areas of your health more closely. He or she can also watch for red flags on your preventative screenings.
In addition, your doctor is able to understand how key events in your home might be impacting you or your family members’ health as well. For example, if your doctor knows that you and your spouse are going through a divorce, he or she is given a better understanding of your mental situation and how stress or anxiety levels in you or your children might be affecting your overall health.
Establish Trust with a Family Doctor
Having an ongoing relationship with a family doctor builds trust. When you have seen the same doctor repeatedly for various issues, they know and understand who you are. As they’ve overseen your journey to maintain good health over a period of time, your relationship with them grows.
As a result, you trust that your family doctor wants what is best for you and truly cares about your health. When this trust is built, it becomes easier to be open with your doctor and share any potential concerns with him or her, which leads to better health overall.
Family Doctors Will Help You Find a Specialist
If you do find yourself in need of a specialist for a particular area of concern, your family doctor is a great resource to help you find the doctor that fits your specific situation. This could include finding a specialist because of potential life-altering issues like cancer or heart disease. However, you also could be experiencing a mobility issue after you have healed from a broken bone. In this case, your doctor can recommend a great physical therapist to help you regain your mobility.
Your doctor already knows your personality, so he or she can recommend a specialist that coincides with that. Because your doctor understands how you respond to treatment plans, diagnoses, or procedures, they can help you find a specialist that will make you feel comfortable while giving you the best advice and treatment plans for your exact medical needs.
Family Doctors Can Save You Time and Money
Finally, having a family doctor can save you time and money! It is much faster and easier to make an appointment to see a primary care doctor once you are an established patient at a practice. Your medical history and records will already be on file at the office. If you call to make an appointment to see a doctor while fighting an illness, you will not have to spend time gathering this information and filling out all the forms before you can be seen and treated.
By seeking care from your family doctor instead of the emergency room or urgent care facilities, you can save quite a bit of money. For both cash-pay and insured patients, visiting one of these emergency facilities will almost always be much more expensive than seeing your family doctor.
In addition, regularly visiting a primary care physician reduces your medical expenses. Regular doctor visits usually means less hospital admissions. It will also be less likely that you unknowingly live with serious, undiagnosed conditions that can become worse without a doctor’s intervention.
Are You Looking for a Family Doctor?
If you are looking for a family doctor, AllCare would love to partner with you in your journey to get the best healthcare possible for you and your family. You can make an appointment online here. Once you’ve made your appointment, please fill out your new patient paperwork. We look forward to meeting you and partnering with you on your health journey!
