Your primary care provider, be it an MD, DO, PA-C, or ARNP, is probably glad to see you for a preventative care visit. Annual physicals allow you and your doctor to go over your body systems and to raise any concerns you have with him or her. These visits are productive in part because you are not there for an acute complaint that draws all of your PCP’s attention. The problem is, though, most medical systems are not focused on preventative care; the system is designed to treat the sick patient. Frustratingly, this may have an overall negative affect on quality of care.

While that’s fine if you have an acute issue that needs addressing right NOW, it can sacrifice long term health. What I mean by that is compensation systems for most PCPs force providers to fill their day with twenty or so medical appointments between fifteen and fifty minutes long. This ignores any of the administrative tasks that follow many visits or corresponding with patients or other medical staff about patient questions, medication refill requests, etc. The system essentially forces PCPs to rush through appointments in order to fit as many appointments into the day that they can. And, ironically, patient health suffers for it.

A fifteen minute medical appointment is hardly enough time to really engage many patients into meaningful discussion about their health, answer their questions, and allow the doctor to ask questions. Instead, as you’ve read in other of our posts, patients complain that their providers are hurried, spend too much time looking at their screen (as they try to take notes of the interview), and on the other side, PCPs complain of burnout from all of the tasks they are burdened with in short bursts of time.

We can all appreciate that in this environment some information simply does not make it from provider to patient and vice versa. Providers miss the significance of complaints, or miss information altogether. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with clients and potential clients about things shared with the doctor that were never followed up on, ignored or glossed over. Most often the information is not significant, but occasionally it leads to a tragic outcome.

So, what’s the take away? Allowing primary care providers to focus on preventative care will pay long term dividends. How do we change that? It will likely require a serious reconsideration of how insurance compensates providers. For now, the medical profession continues to adjust to how they treat and get paid for patients, and see what really is the most financially viable way for insurers to profit from doing so. So, you can probably guess how quickly this entire concept will change.