For many people, missing annual doctors’ appointments is not a cause for concern. Most employers do not support employees, to take time off for preventive medical appointments. Going to a doctor’s office for examination is just as scary as going to the dentist. However, the routine checkup can often assist more serious medical problems from developing, from regular cancer screenings to dietary and emotional health checks. Since our opinion of healthcare aims at reacting to a meaningful problem once it becomes deadly, somewhat of routinely caring for our health, the remedy of medical issues often transforms into large-scale emergencies that cost thousands of dollars.
Similarly, because most patients do not prioritize regular medical care, health programs incline towards treating large-scale medical emergencies, instead of providing inadequate scale treatment overtime to limit sicknesses. Because of the focus on giving sick care, many people do not consider that they need to see a doctor before they become ill, continuing the cycle.
Healthcare centering on emergency care
While our medical treatment and technology have made leaps in bounds in the preceding decade alone, much of the current strategy for dealing with and treating health concerns focus more on large-scale issues. Our current healthcare system concentrates densely on the theory of symptom treatment, which is also called sick care. For many of the illnesses facing individuals in hospitals all over the world, medical treatment concentrates on caring for ill individuals, rather than tracking the health of individuals early on to prevent sickness in the first position. Because of this, as well as the increasing expense of medical care, many individuals do not attend their doctor until their illness is nearly untreatable, driving up their prices and lowering their chances of improvement.
However, if healthcare shifts from mainly providing emergency care for the sick, and instead focus on keeping healthy individuals from becoming sick, the overall cost of treatment and the abundance of severe medical emergencies would decrease over time. This would lead to an improvement in the quality of care, and the quality of life, for patients everywhere.