Anxious About Your Kids Going Back to School? Here’s How DPC at ABQ Can Help!
It’s almost three years post pandemic and everyone has somehow settled for the work-from-home and homeschooling norm. Now that it’s back to school season and the doors are beginning to open up, are you ready?
Somewhere in between the trips to school and trips back home, parents and children get exposed to a lot of bacteria and viruses along the way. How do we make sure we and our children are truly protected as we start to embrace another new normal? Direct primary care just might give us the answers!
Overview
Well, we have heard enough about the disaster the healthcare system in our country has become. We have had enough complaints about surprise medical bills, limited coverage, co-pays, longer waiting hours, and even unproductive clinic visits.
Direct primary care has revolutionized the way we are being taken care of. Not only does it take care of our health, but we also get to see happy clinicians because of continuity of care, lesser paperwork, and longer clinician-patient times.
DPC gives us a picture of mutually beneficial health benefits which we need the most, especially in these times when there is increasing awareness of the prevention of chronic diseases. We need direct clinician access, comprehensive laboratory exams, and easy availability of outpatient procedures minus the anxiety of long queues and rushed clinic visits.
Get to know an innovative solution that you can fully rely, on for your healthcare needs.
The challenges in managing pediatric health
Addressing pediatric concerns is no easy feat. What adults can easily verbalize in sentences, babies and toddlers make up for by crying and fussing.
Managing schoolchildren’s health may be a bit less challenging than that of infants and toddlers, however, it still needs time and focus. And there will be times when our full-time jobs take up most of our attention.
Now and then we need an experienced health professional to help us with what may be symptoms of something serious – whether it be to spot a nasty rash or figure out whether our kid’s bloatedness is something more.
Our post-pandemic concerns revolve mostly around infectious diseases, which are perhaps the most common in school-aged kids. With COVID concerns seemingly under control, we then have the looming scare of monkeypox on the news. We have good news for you – you don’t have to face all of these alone! Being a parent and a provider is already a huge responsibility, so why don’t you let us help ease your worries with a DPC enrollment?
Every parent only wants the best for their kids. Give them a healthy and bright future with Direct Primary Care!
Why you need that Direct Primary Care (DPC) enrollment
The reasons are too many to mention, so we’ll break it down for you in bite-sized chunks of information:
1. Longer wellness visits – with little to no waiting time
Everyone needs to understand the value of a wellness visit – and as important as it is for adults, the more important it is for babies and schoolchildren.
It is during wellness visits that patients – especially parents of patients – and clinicians discuss strategies on how to prevent common diseases. While it seems that parents can easily google tips for preventive practices, sometimes it needs a clinician’s keen eye to differentiate between useful, rational information and fake news.
Previously unrecognized diagnoses may be uncovered during an effective wellness visit.
Wellness visits are avenues where clinicians can suggest and provide preventive services, and it has been a given fact that this helps to improve health and decrease mortality. The thing is – limited time visits also limit a clinician’s ability to properly diagnose diseases.
DPC deletes the “limited” in every clinic visit. The average wellness visit ranges from 11 to 20-minutes, as reported by 47.1% of parents in a study published back in October 2011, while 33.6% of parents report wellness visits lasting less than 10 minutes per visit. It is no wonder that many clinicians are missing out on subtle signs of disease and disease progression as visits of shorter duration are linked to reductions in content and quality of care. Many clinicians practicing DPC on the pediatric population report more satisfying outcomes. This primarily stems from unrushed wellness clinic visits allowing them to spend an average of 60 minutes per patient.
2. Patient follow-up and compliance – a vital aspect of better overall patient care
Since parents pay for subscriptions rather than paying fees per visit, patient compliance becomes easy and attainable. This is especially favorable for parents with kids suffering from frequent health issues such as asthma.
Parents are more encouraged to come back for the next visit without having to worry about finances. In return, clinicians get to focus on how to give better care rather than being controlled by insurance companies for financial gain.
Furthermore, compliance with follow-up visits is one thing, and medication compliance is another. DPC provides avenues on how to save on medications and labwork alike, making it more ideal for every employee with kids.
This is because medication compliance is especially crucial in pediatrics. It composes a very important component for the effective treatment, prevention of diseases, and overall health promotion. The right medication leads to control if not the absolute resolution of an illness. Sad to note, however, recent statistics showed that one-third of all patients fail to complete even relatively short treatment regimens. DPC plays such an important role because the commitment of the patient (and in the field of pediatrics, we mean parents of the patient) to complete treatment is seconded by the commitment of their clinician in helping the patient achieve better health outcomes.
3. Telemedicine – access to a healthcare professional, anytime
We have to admit: we did not know that telemedicine is feasible up until COVID-19 knocked and rampaged its way into the world! Suddenly, we began to circumvent our way around old practices, and we found out it is actually possible to get prompt and ideal treatment just by having a video call.
Clinicians may have once thought a good diagnosis cannot be achieved without the actual use of the five senses. After all, it's what is being taught during nursing and medical school! But then, COVID-19 made clinicians begin to adapt and come up with ways to substitute for the senses without compromising a good and keen clinical eye.
The thing is, the new normal (of everything virtual), is slowly coming to an end. We need to embrace a new way of dealing with things, and we usher in the “hybrid” (as we call it) way of living. With schools slowly opening up, parents who have become accustomed to virtual health practices may feel anxious enough to send their kids back to school, a place where potential infection and trauma may occur.
DPC helps ease anxiety by offering 24/7 access for parents at the first sign of a fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and so on. It is no longer necessary to wait for a few days without being seen by a health professional. It is no longer necessary to wait for hours just to get a prescription for acetaminophen and a lab workup. All these queues have become history with the advent of telemedicine.
Telemedicine can be both a strength and a weakness in the implementation of an effective healthcare system. But when used cautiously and properly, it can be the best tool there is for early diagnosis, early treatment, and prevention of complications.
Yes. A real wellness visit is possible. How? Schedule an appointment with us now to give you a glimpse of how DPC works!
Takeaway
Our healthcare system is flawed but it doesn’t mean that our health should bear the brunt of this flawed system. Thanks to direct primary care, we begin to realize that health should be given priority and achieving competitive health benefits should come at a fraction of the cost.
Healthcare should be simple and transparent, and preventive practices should result in fewer hospital visits and referrals. And DPC can do just that, and more! Happy and healthy patients beget happy clinicians. It is supposedly a two-way process and DPC makes that possible.
If that should be the case with adults, there is no reason not to share this ideal setup with our children and the rest of the family. With the schooldays coming up, all the more we will appreciate direct primary care and how it will help us become the better parents we should be. Schedule an appointment with us, now!
