The Importance of Primary Care

Primary care involves more than routine check-ups and visits when you’re sick. The comprehensive care you receive from your primary care provider involves preventing, diagnosing, and caring for your medical conditions to give you the best chance for living a healthy life.

These services can give you an edge in staying healthy and reducing serious problems. Adults who maintain a relationship with a primary care provider have 19% lower odds of premature death than those who limit their care to visits with specialists.

The primary care providers at Macomb Medical Clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan, provide expert primary care services for patients of all ages. The entire staff is dedicated to ensuring that you remain as healthy as possible by evaluating your needs and coordinating your care for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to ensure optimal results. 

Don't overlook the benefits that primary care can provide over your lifetime. Find out more about the ways primary care works to keep you healthy and why this type of service is so important to your well-being. 

Identify health issues early

Primary care works to identify signs of acute and chronic medical conditions as early as possible through examinations and routine screenings. This can help control risks, identify unknown issues, and enable disease management as early as possible. 

Early disease identification and treatment can be important for patients dealing with diseases like high blood pressure and pre-diabetes, which can often be reversed with diet and lifestyle changes before they worsen and become complex issues. 

Early disease identification can also improve disease outcomes. This can be important for many types of cancer, which can often be easier to treat when they’re caught in the early stages before they have a chance to spread. 

Avoid complications from chronic conditions

Having a chronic condition such as high blood pressure or diabetes makes you vulnerable to a wide range of complications, depending on the disease and your overall condition. 

Primary care can help you keep these conditions controlled and prevent the problems that can arise due to factors such as stress, lifestyle changes, or other health problems. This can involve education and recommendations for ways to stay healthy between visits. 

Coordinate your health care

The services you receive through primary care help to guide you in your use of the healthcare system. When necessary, primary care involves referring patients to appropriate professionals for specialized care as needed. 

Primary care helps ensure that all the moving parts of your health care services work together for your well-being. Regular check-ups help your primary care provider remain current on your condition so they can direct you to the services you need as necessary. 

This coordination of care can ensure that you get the right care as quickly as possible as opposed to trying to navigate complex health conditions on your own and jumping from one service to another without direction. Primary care can be especially valuable if you develop a complicated medical problem that requires diagnostic tests, care from multiple specialists, rehabilitation services, hospital care, and prescriptions. 

When issues arise, your primary care provider serves as your advisor and advocate. For some insurance plans, such as HMOs, primary care providers serve as gatekeepers to other health care services to ensure proper utilization of health services and resources. 

Access a broad range of services

Primary care includes a broad range of services that can address many acute and chronic conditions including:

• Common cold or flu
• High blood pressure
• Gastrointestinal complications
• Weight gain or weight loss
• Joint or muscle pain
• Skin ailments
• Gastrointestinal complications
• Menopausal issues
• Chronic health condition like arthritis or diabetes

The primary care services at Macomb Medical Clinic include a one-stop location for testing, diagnosis, and treatment of these and many other types of conditions. Our full-service lab and pharmacy help make it easy to follow through on recommended tests and treatments.

Benefit from a trusted relationship

It’s not uncommon for patients to remain with the same primary care practice for most of their adult lives. As a result, your primary care provider likely knows you and your medical history well. They’ve seen how you act when you’re healthy and when you’re ill and can use that history to determine the state of your well-being.

Even if you’re new to our practice, our primary care providers have the skills and services to help you feel confident in the care you receive. We work to establish a patient-practitioner relationship that fosters trust so you can feel comfortable working with us as we help you with a broad range of health issues.

Learn more about the importance of primary care in establishing and maintaining your well-being. Call our office to arrange a consultation today.