Continuity of care is important. Your primary care provider already knows your child’s history. Your child has a continuous relationship with his or her primary care provider. When a physician knows your child’s health history, habits, and personality, he or she can more easily recognize signs that might signal a change in your child’s health.
Better care. Physicals performed during part of a yearly well care visit are more comprehensive than rushed clinic visits.
A well care visit covers so much more. When your child’s primary care provider performs a routine preventive well care visit, it encompasses screening for behavioral and mental health problems; learning difficulties; tobacco, alcohol, and substance use; social problems; and sexual activity. Primary care provider also monitors growth and development, conduct a comprehensive physical examination, address previous and current medical problems, update immunizations, perform recommended screening tests, and give anticipatory guidance. These are all critical pieces of a child’s full health history. If I’m missing vaccinations, get them during a sports physical.
Better cost. Well care visits are fully covered by most insurance at your primary care provider’s office. Why pay for a separate visit to a walk-in clinic?
Extended hours. Check with your child’s primary care provider to see if they have extended hours on certain evenings or weekends. Many of them offer this, especially during the summer months before fall sports start. We have extended hours till 8PM on evenings and 7AM till 8PM on Saturdays for your convenience.
Clinic visits are often cursory. Some schools and coaches recommend sports physicals at a clinic in a school gym or at a retail-based health center. This type of exam is often performed without the child’s complete medical history and often without a parent. The preventive care issues mentioned above are rarely addressed. There is little to no communication back to the primary care doctor. In short, this exam doesn’t address the whole scope of your child’s health.
Primary goal of Sports physical. To determine general good health, assess the fitness level of the athlete, detect predisposed conditions that may lead to new injuries, evaluate any existing injuries, assess physicality and body size, detect poor conditioning.
No one knows you like your family doctor