Welcome Back to Your Doctor’s Office
Good health is valuable, so it’s worth doing whatever we can to protect it. For the past year and a half, that’s meant staying safe from COVID-19. Now, we’ve reached a point where we can turn our attention to other ways to protect and improve our health—such as getting care that may have taken a back seat during the pandemic.
As healthcare facilities open up, are you ready to get back to in-person care?
Most of us got somewhat used to staying home more and going out less during the pandemic. For instance, SCAN Senior Advocate Dottie Sabo had met with her doctor several times during the pandemic, but they were virtual visits from the safety of her home. When her primary care doctor asked her to come in for a check-up, “I was pretty worried,” she remembers. “But the office staff greeted me in the hall with COVID questions, a thermometer, hand sanitizer and another mask for me to wear.”
Since then, Dottie has been back to see her doctor in person several times. She says each time she “felt very safe, as they were taking precautions for them and me.” And now that she’s fully vaccinated, Dottie says she’ll be getting back to other in-person care. First up? Making that now-overdue dentist appointment!
Are you thinking, “I’ve waited this long; what’s the harm in putting it off a little longer?”
Better not to put care off any longer. Screenings and other preventive care can catch potential health issues before there are symptoms. And when they’re caught early, they can be more easily treated so they don’t get worse. Now that it’s safer to go into the world again, getting back on track with your care should be a priority.
Important preventive care includes:
- Regular check-ups with your doctor
- Lab work, such as blood, urine and kidney tests
- Screenings, such as mammograms and colon cancer tests
- Immunizations, including the flu and pneumonia shots—and the COVID-19 vaccine!
Better safe than sorry: Have you noticed a change in your health?
When SCAN Senior Advocate Maxine Marcus first noticed a small growth beside her nose, the pandemic was raging. She was concerned: That little bump looked like the basal cell carcinoma she already had removed, and it was in about the same place. “If it hadn’t been COVID time, I would have run to my primary care doctor and asked to see a dermatologist,” Maxine says. Instead, she waited and “checked every day and worried about it.”
Eventually, Maxine went in to have the bump checked by a physician’s assistant in her doctor’s office. It was good news: no cancer. Cancer or not, however, getting it checked as soon as she noticed a change would have been the best course of care. If only to save her several months of unnecessary worrying!
You might want to continue to use virtual visits for some care.
They work really well for some kinds of care, including urgent care and certain follow-up appointments. (See page 6 for more on your Telehealth benefit.) But many preventive services need to be done in person. Plus, your doctor can get important information by seeing you that he or she can’t get over the phone or in a video chat.
