Wellness Visits at Aspen Medical are designed to keep you healthy

There are two types of visits to Aspen Medical Center. There are “problem-based visits” and “wellness visits.” A “problem-based visit” focuses on a specific problem. It may be an acute problem such as a cold or flu-like illness, an earache, a sprained ankle or other injury, a cut or laceration, a sore throat, a cough, or a fever, etc. A problem-based visit might also focus on a chronic condition or conditions, like diabetes, high cholesterol, hypothyroidism, high blood pressure or hypertension, etc. A problem-based visit can occur as often or as seldom as necessary.

What is a “wellness visit”?

The second type of visit to Aspen Medical Center is a wellness visit. The “wellness visit” is all about prevention. Wellness visits are annual physicals and generally occur once a year. We perform a head to toe physical exam at that time. These visits are designed to help you stay healthy and prevent illness. At a wellness visit, we focus on things like vaccines to prevent diseases and screening tests like pap smears for women to detect cervical cancer. If necessary, we will make referrals for mammograms to screen for breast cancer or colon cancer screening to detect colon cancer. We’ll measure your blood pressure (like we do at all visits) to screen for high blood pressure or “hypertension.” We might recommend blood work after the wellness visit to screen for health conditions such as high cholesterol and diabetes. The point of the wellness visit is to allow us to detect problems early while they are still relatively easy to treat. 

The “Medicare Wellness Visit”

For people on Medicare, which generally starts at age 65, there is a specific type of wellness visit. Medicare calls this visit an “Annual Wellness Visit” (AWV). It is very similar to our wellness visit. The AWV is also a preventive visit. During the AWV, we’ll discuss vaccines and do appropriate screenings for vision, hearing, fall risk, depression, and dementia, among others.

An ounce of prevention . . .

There has been some debate over whether regular wellness visits are necessary, but we feel they are extremely important. You know the old adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That is what these wellness visits are all about. We know that if we detect problems early, we have a much better chance of preventing them from getting worse or curing them altogether. Prevention is so much simpler, less complicated, cheaper, safer, less painful and more comfortable for you than waiting until problems require more care. So we welcome you to get a wellness visit at Aspen. Our goal is to help you live as long and healthy a life as possible.