Since a lot of factors nowadays can affect your health, receiving primary health care will prove to be a better practice to always stay fit and healthy. Primary healthcare is opposed to the conventional reactive medical care, when individuals seek medical consultation only if already experiencing chronic pain and/or other symptoms of a potential disorder.
Actually, the medical community is now emphasizing primary health care services for better health; offering preventive and routine monitoring that allow for a proactive approach toward maintaining a healthier lifestyle.
Developers of healthcare technologies are likewise shifting their focus in developing applications that will enable individuals to take a proactive approach in caring for their health. Healthcare systems are also using innovative digital technology when attending to patients, instead of providing reactive medical treatments as response to the health conditions of their patients.
Why Proactive Healthcare is Better Than Reactive Healthcare
Previous studies have shown that about a third of Americans afflicted with certain symptoms did not know that they are already diabetic. Other medical findings revealed that 1 in 13 Americans fell ill with a rare, undiagnosed health problem.
Since potable water is an expensive commodity in the U.S. some people were not aware that their tendency to drink less water has caused them health problems. A person’s faulty genetic makeup can put him or her at risk of developing certain diseases, but unfortunately, the practice of reactive healthcare leads to the discovery of the genetic disorder at a stage when it has already taken place.
What Exactly is Reactive Healthcare
People tend to stay in the dark about their real health conditions, whilst staying passive to the elements that can worsen a potential health problem. Once the symptoms appear, it is only then that they will submit themselves for medical examination and proper diagnosis.
More often than not, traditional medical practitioners also wait until their patient responds well, or not at all to basic primary care. As a result, the prognosis of how the disease is developing becomes the basis for recommending medications in managing the treatment of the disorder.
Reactive healthcare tends to be more costly on the part of the patient, and often cause financial anxiety especially if a patient is unable to report for work. Since reactive healthcare can be financially crippling, people who have no or minimal healthcare coverage, purchase medicine online where prescription drugs are offered at lower prices.
In many cases, these sufferers buy medications without prescription, usually from online stores that allow prescriptionless purchase; but only for low dosages. A medicine commonly purchased online is carisoprodol, or the generic soma, which is a stronger form of muscle pain relaxant but classified as a Type 4 controlled substance.
Proactive Primary Care Reduces the Need for Expensive Prescription Medicines
The use of wearable and smartphone apps designed for health maintenance and prevention of diseases is one way of being proactive. There are wearable technologies capable of measuring the commonly monitored vital signs that indicate a person’s wellbeing or otherwise.
In knowing one’s blood pressure, heart rate or blood oxygen saturation, a user can have data to know how his or her physical activities affect his or her health. However, one of the challenges of getting people to use wearable and smartphone apps, is the user’s level of understanding of how the readings impact their health.
As an aside, studies also show that most patients with undiagnosed diseases are those who do not have healthcare coverage or cannot afford the cost of seeing a medical specialist. That being the case, the widespread adoption of primary healthcare services in a community can be achieved, only if affordable, and supported with educational information.