An excerpt from Medical Answers Now!: How Direct Primary Care Guarantees Fast Access to Your Doctor.
People have all kinds of health questions. Some are mere curiosity. Some are general questions about their long-term health. Some relate to nagging symptoms they have had for a long time, but some concerns aren’t so casual, really can’t wait, and require treatment right away.
When you have a pressing medical need, what do you do? Maybe you feel sick, have pain, or just got injured. You need attention immediately. Right now. Acute illnesses and injuries can’t wait. In addition to providing information, a main function of a primary care physician is to provide treatment in a timely manner. You know you need to see a doctor right away. You could just go to the emergency room or an urgent care walk-in clinic, but you wish you could see a doctor that you know and trust—a doctor who knows you. If you could get your doctor on the phone or see them in the office today, you know that would be best.
Just as doctors primarily answer the two vital questions discussed in the first chapter when making recommendations to patients (What’s wrong with me? and What should I do about it?), when it comes to treating them, we also typically do two things: we cut on you or give you pills. Sure, we sometimes tell you what to eat, to get more exercise or lose weight, but for the most part the treatments prescribed by physicians usually boil down to either prescribing medications or performing a surgical procedure.
When you are on your smartphone, no matter what you want to do, there’s an app for that. If you go to the doctor, there’s always a pill for that. Modern medicine has advanced remarkably in our lifetime with the development of complex and precise surgical procedures and prescription medications that treat trauma, chronic diseases, and acute conditions more effectively than anyone would have imagined a few decades ago.
When these “scalpels and pills” are put to work quickly, they routinely save lives. And while this description is a simple reduction of a broad range of medical treatments, starting the appropriate treatment as soon as possible often determines the outcome. The sooner a treatment is begun, the more likely and more quickly you, the patient, are to fully recover.
For most illnesses, escalating medical problems, and acute injuries, when you decide that you need to see a doctor, you want to do it now, not tomorrow or next week. How fast you can get in front of a doctor who can diagnose and treat you makes all the difference. Timely access to your primary care physician usually determines the quality of your care, how quickly you initiate treatment, and consequently how quickly you recover