Preventive care at Marshfield Clinic focuses on preventing illnesses, injuries or medical conditions before they happen.
Preventive care, also known as preventive medicine, includes age and gender appropriate lifestyle changes, vaccinations, screening tests and other measures.
Your doctor will help you identify major health risk factors (such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and so on) and work with you to bring them under control.
This website covers the topics generally associated with preventive care. Your doctor may have other or different guidelines based on your personal health situation.
Quality of life
The goal is to keep you healthy. You will enjoy a better quality of life, while reducing your potential health care costs.
Doctors usually practice preventive care at the individual level proactively using examinations, screenings and other tools to address your individual health needs.
Preventive care programs targeting health concerns such as tobacco use, drug abuse and vaccinations (flu, for instance) address health concerns of the whole population.
The old saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” describes how preventive care benefits you and the entire health care system.
Preventive medicine offers better outcomes for most patients and lower health care expenses.
Wide range
Preventive care covers a wide range of activities from the simplest habit of thoroughly washing your hands to sophisticated medical procedures that look for killers such as breast and colon cancer.
Together, you and your Marshfield Clinic primary care doctor can determine which of the preventive care tools is appropriate for you and your family.
While the focus of preventive care is to keep you healthy, it also extends to people with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer and others.
For these people, preventive care is about managing symptoms, complications and improving your quality of life.
