The following definitions relating to primary care should be taken together. They describe the care provided to the patient, the system delivering care, and the clinicians providing primary care. Together they form a framework where patients can access efficient, equitable, and effective primary care services of the highest quality leading to better care, better health, and lower costs.
Primary care is the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by physicians and their health care teams who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family and community.
The care is person-centered, team-based, community-aligned, and designed to achieve better health, better care, and lower costs. Additionally , primary care includes health promotion, disease prevention, health maintenance, counseling, patient education, diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses in a variety of health care settings e. Primary care is performed and managed by a personal physician who often collaborates with other health professionals, and utilizes consultation or referral as appropriate.
Primary care provides patient advocacy in the health care system to accomplish cost-effective and equitable care by coordination of health care services. Primary care promotes effective communication with patients and families to encourage them to be a partner in health care.
A primary care practice serves as the patient's entry point into the health care system and as the continuing focal point for all needed health care services. Primary care practices provide patients with ready access to their own personal physician and health care team. It includes care that is: Person and family-oriented, continuous, comprehensive and equitable, team-based and collaborative, coordinated and integrated, accessible, and high value.
Primary care practices meet the needs of patients with differentiated and undifferentiated problems and manage the vast majority of patients' concerns. Primary care practices are generally located in the community they serve, thereby facilitating access to health care while maintaining a wide variety of specialty and institutional consultative and referral relationships for specific care needs. The primary care practice structure often includes a team of physicians and other health professionals.
A primary care physician is a specialist in family medicine, general internal medicine or general pediatrics who provides definitive care to the undifferentiated patient at the point of first contact, and takes continuing responsibility for providing the patient's comprehensive care. This care may include chronic, preventive and acute care in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Such physicians are specifically trained to provide comprehensive primary care services through residency or fellowship training in acute and chronic care settings.
Primary care physicians devote most of their practice to providing primary care services to a defined patient population. The primary care practice style is such that the personal primary care physician serves as the entry point for the patient's health care needs - not limited by problem origin, organ system, or diagnosis. Primary care physicians advocate for the patient in coordinating the use of the entire health care system to benefit the patient. Physicians without training in the primary care specialties of family medicine, general internal medicine, or general pediatrics may sometimes provide patient care services that primary care physicians usually deliver.
These physicians may focus on specific patient care needs related to prevention, health maintenance, acute care, chronic care or rehabilitation. These physicians, however, do not offer these services within the context of comprehensive, first contact and continuing care. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Skip to footer Search this website.
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Most of us know that primary care doctors treat aches, pains, and colds. But these are just a few areas primary care doctors treat in a broad field of expertise. Primary care doctors:. If you do need specialized care, primary care doctors integrate your treatment with a specialist and make sure any additional care you need gets coordinated across other doctors and the larger health system.
Did you know that primary care has four different areas? How do you stay your healthiest self?
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