Keep seeing your doctor!

This is the best advice for maintaining your health during the coronavirus pandemic. Participating in regular wellness, screening and preventive visits with your primary care provider can help detect any medical conditions and allow for appropriate interventions as soon as possible.

Regular interactions with your primary care provider are especially important for individuals with chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure or congestive heart failure. Lack of proper care for a chronic health condition can worsen short-term symptoms and affect your health long-term.

Maintaining your relationship with your primary care provider is key for protecting your good health during the pandemic, along with wearing masks, practicing social distancing, avoiding crowded places and proper hand hygiene. Following these simple steps can reduce the risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19 and any other viral or bacterial infection.

I also encourage my patients to eat more fruits and vegetables and less processed food. Regular exercise will help strengthen the immune system and may help prevent you from getting sick or having complications from any kind of infection. To maintain a healthy lifestyle, I recommend that individuals practice 30 to 40 minutes of aerobic exercise three to four times a week. A properly working home blood pressure cuff is also a good idea, since high blood pressure often has silent symptoms and may go undetected.

As always, if you or a loved one has symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain, extreme dizziness or inability to walk, call 911 immediately for evaluation and treatment in an emergency department.

While COVID-19 is still prevalent in our communities, all our offices follow recommended safety measures to maintain a clean and safe environment. All medical staff members and patients will wear a face mask, and there will be a limit on how many patients can be in the office at the same time. All patients will be screened before coming to the office.

We are not currently allowing walk-in patients, and furniture has been removed from the waiting room to allow safe distancing.

While our offices are safe for patient visits, we continue to encourage patients to use virtual visits when it may not be necessary for an in-person appointment. These can include follow-up care and urgent care or select appointments for new patients.

Scheduled virtual visits are available with a Tower Health Medical Group Physician or Advanced Practice Provider (APP), or on demand care is available 24/7 with a Tower Health Urgent Care physician or APP through Virtual Care by TDH.

These telephone or video visits are a very useful tool for physicians to assess patient conditions without bringing you to the office. It is particularly relevant to vulnerable populations such as the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions who have been suffering from more severe symptoms of the COVID-19 disease.

Maintaining good health is always important and even more so as our community faces this pandemic. Your Tower Health primary care provider is here for you in facilities that are clean and safe.

Dr. Albert Rabinovich practices internal medicine with Tower Health Medical Group.

Originally posted here:
The importance of primary care visits during the COVID-19 pandemic - Reading Eagle