Finding and securing a lifelong healthcare provider can give you the patient many benefits. These days, more doctors are focused on the importance of integrated healthcare for the aging population. Without a familiar physician, you risk having to explain your symptoms, conditions, and ailments over and over again when an emergency arises or a preventative appointment is necessary. This can affect the overall healthcare that you receive. Here are the top five benefits of finding and keeping a lifelong medical provider:

1: Trust

A relationship is nothing without trust. And the same is true for the relationship you have with a healthcare provider. As you age with a physician, you gain the opportunity to build a long-term relationship with them. During that time period there is a mutual trusting relationship that develops, allowing you as a patient to raise your concerns and feel comfortable divulging private or embarrassing information.

Your healthcare provider walks alongside you during your health journey and having a good trusting relationship with them enables to you ask important questions that might go unasked with a new physician. You are more likely to discuss mood changes with a lifelong healthcare provider than the specialists you may only see on occasion. By having an enduring healthcare relationship, your physician is able to recognize physical and emotional changes or patterns just by talking to you.

2: Versatile Treatments

A family medicine provider can treat individuals and whole families. Most family physicians care for everyone in between toddlers and retirees. Many family doctors see individual patients for decades. They focus on facilitating the best health and well-being for their patients regardless of their age. Family practitioners are trained to diagnose and treat a wide array of health conditions.

By seeing a healthcare provider long term, you get time with a medical professional that focuses on all aspects of your life and how they can influence your health. Family nurse practitioners (FNP) coordinate and provide patient care, often alongside your main physician. By having a team that includes a FNP, you can maintain a healthy lifestyle with a familiar medical professional, even if your primary care physician is not available.

3: Health Trainer

Good health is not built by itself. Your healthcare providers act as personal health trainers of sorts. A physician with extensive training and knowledge can help you with health training programs like weight loss, diet modification, exercise regimens, supplement recommendations, and smoking cessation programs. With the medical and psychological support of a lifelong healthcare provider, you will have specialized and individualized plans to help you achieve your health goals.

4: Versed in Medical History

Having a lifelong healthcare provider means they have had time to get to know both yours and your family’s medical history. With this knowledge they are able to make accurate diagnoses while watching for red flags that may come up in regards to medications or conditions.

By having in-depth knowledge of your medical history, your physician can get an accurate family medical history which and can provide them with markers to watch for as you age. For example, if your grandmother or mother had cataracts, a lifelong provider would know to look closely for the signs that you are developing them and then provide the appropriate information to treat them effectively if they occur.

Since healthcare providers are trained to be experts in preventative health, they can look at your family history, medical history, and your current condition and recommend screenings like colonoscopies, Pap smears, diabetes screening, and mammograms at the appropriate age and stage in your life.

5: Personalized Attention

Having a lifelong care provider can benefit you in the long run with special attention. The typical family physician sees 20 to 25 patients over an 8-hour day. If your healthcare provider is in charge of the walk in clinic at their office, they will see on average 40-50 patients in 8 hours. This means that, by having a lifelong provider, they are able to spend double the amount of time to help you solve your medical concerns.

Many dedicated healthcare physicians make themselves available for same-day appointments for urgent matters with their established patients. Besides offering extra face-to-face time, a dedicated physician spends extra time reviewing your charts, investigating and consulting on up-to-date research methods that are meant to help you achieve better personalized healthcare.

 

Keep in mind that having a lifelong healthcare provider does not mean they have to retain a certain specialty or that you cannot see other doctors. But by having individualized lifelong care, you are sure to have a better overall health personalized to your distinct medical concerns.

 

Brooke Faulkner is a senior rights advocate and mother of two in the Pacific Northwest. She loves spending time with friends and family at the assisted living facility near her home, and has collected more stories there than she can count.