Why Annual Physical Exams Are Important
Everyone – no matter how healthy you are or what age you are – should visit their general practitioner each year for a wellness examination.
What Is a Wellness Exam?
A wellness examination is a basic physical examination designed to evaluate and monitor a patient’s health, track a variety of factors that can affect health, screen for early signs of disease, and ensure that all ongoing treatment plans remain effective and appropriate for managing the patient’s ongoing medical concerns.
Additionally, wellness appointments provide an opportunity to discuss healthy lifestyle choices, mental health concerns, and preventative care. Scheduling an annual wellness exam is the first step to being proactive about your health.
5 Benefits of Annual Wellness Exams
1. Establishing a Health Baseline
By recording a patient’s weight, heart rate, blood oxygen level, and blood pressure at each appointment and taking routine laboratory tests, we can establish a baseline of the patient’s health. This makes it much easier to recognize health changes that could indicate the earliest signs of disease.
2. Early Detection and Intervention
Being able to detect the subtle shifts that can indicate health changes and developing illness means we’re able to intervene in the progression of disease. As a result, we can sometimes prevent illness from worsening before a patient even experiences noticeable symptoms.
3. Personalized Health and Wellness Advice
Generally, everyone should strive to stay physically active and eat healthily. However, physical activity, healthy eating, and a healthy lifestyle don’t look the same for everyone. During a wellness exam, you’ll receive lifestyle, health, and wellness advice and recommendations based on your individual health, age, physical abilities, medical concerns, and more.
4. Preventative Care
Annual wellness exams also focus on preventative care, making sure your vaccinations and boosters are all kept current.
5. Cost Savings
The cost of wellness and preventative care is always less expensive than the cost of treating diseases that could have been prevented with proper vaccinations, early intervention, and/or lifestyle choices.
Schedule Your Next Wellness Exam at Gulf Coast Health Center
At Gulf Coast Health Center, we’re fully committed to making wellness and preventative care available to everyone with our comprehensive, affordable healthcare services. Plus, with five locations around the Gulf Coast of Texas and telemedicine available, appointments are convenient, too.
To learn more about the importance of annual wellness examinations or to schedule yours, we welcome you to contact us today.
