Jaime Lewis (Host): Why is it important to see a primary care provider? In a field of specializations like medicine, the role of a general practitioner cannot be overstated. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Shilpi Khosla, Medical Director for Primary Care at the University of Maryland, Upper Chesapeake Health. She'll share what a primary care provider is responsible for and what to expect from this critical relationship in your healthcare journey. Welcome to the Live Greater podcast series, information for a healthier you from the University of Maryland Medical System. I'm Jaime Lewis. Dr. Khosla, welcome to the podcast.

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): Thank you for having me.

Host: Let's start with some definitions. What is a primary care provider and are there different kinds?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): So a primary care provider is your first point of contact for healthcare needs. You can have a physician as your primary care provider. You can have a nurse practitioner as your primary care provider. And any primary care provider ensures that you get preventive care, to screen for various medical conditions like hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol, and different kinds of cancer screenings.

Host: Why is it important for me to have a PCP and how do I find one?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): So your primary care provider not only does preventive care for you and manages chronic conditions that you may have, but also coordinates care for when you need to be referred to a specialist and which specialist to see. And the easiest way to find a primary care physician is well, if you are, you know, tech savvy enough and you have internet. For our primary care providers, you can go to umms.org/UCH, but different organizations have different ways to look up for primary care providers. And of course, through your insurance companies, because they have a list for provider that is covered under your network for primary care. So that's the, those are the most common ways to do that.

Host: Can you talk a bit about how someone can choose a primary care provider based on what matters most to them?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): Yeah, obviously, sometimes it's easier to choose the kind of primary care provider you need is by meeting with them and having a consultation with them because then you can talk about different conditions or what is important to you. But also you can look up their biodata online and see if they specialize in a certain kind of field.

Some primary care providers may be specializing in women care or some may be doing certain procedures sometimes, sometimes they do sports medicine, or they may say that they like to work with a geriatric population. So you can look at the biodata, that's one way of doing it, and the other way is to meeting with them and trying to see if your ideas align with the primary care providers.

Host: How would you describe the primary care provider's relationship to the patient and what is the role a PCP plays in someone's lifelong health care journey?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): It's very important to have a good relationship with a primary care provider because they know you from the beginning and they know your medical history so they can enable a personalized and comprehensive care and they can talk to you and since they know you from so long, if once you develop that relationship of course, you guys can talk together and make a combined decision like a decision that involves the patient also, about different treatment plans, about different kind of therapies, or what you want, what you don't want those kind of things. Because once you get to know your patients and the patients get to know you as a primary care provider, you're open about that discussion and you can say, you know, I want to do this or not that and so forth.

So it's very important to have that longitudinal relationship and continuity of care.

Host: Well, let's talk a little bit about communication with a primary care provider. Let's say I have questions about my health that come up from time to time. Do I need an appointment to address every question I have?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): It depends on if that question is related to a recent appointment that you had with your primary care provider, because if it's something like a quick question about something you need clarification on, or a question about some treatment plan that you just discussed, then it's easy to send a message through the portal, which is very common these days and most organizations have that.

So, you can send a message to them through your portal and your primary care provider or the supporting staff will get back to you, usually, within reasonable time. t If thequestion is not urgent, then it's reasonable to send it through the portal. But if it's a very urgent message, then I would recommend calling the provider's office to speak to someone and get someone's attention so the provider can get back to you even sooner. If it's a new concern, if it's a new problem, then you can still send the message through the portal and hopefully the supporting staff will direct you to either make an appointment or they can send the message to the provider and the provider can decide whether it's something that they can answer without seeing you.

Or if they need to see you, then they will let you know.

Host: We touched a little bit on getting an annual physical. Why should someone get a physical and what should they expect from it?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): An annual physical is once a year, a full exam. And it also includes going over your medical history, your social history, your habits, your family history, to assess your risk factors for different conditions. At your annual physical, we also do a full exam. Of course, like I said, from, you know, head to toe.

Things that you may not even have concerns about, but a primary care provider may find some abnormality while doing that exam. Also to do a screening for various medical conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol by doing different medical tests and labs. We also touch upon different cancer screenings by giving you a list of, you know, tests that you need to do, which is age based, of course. For example, for lung cancer screening, if you are a candidate or not, depending on your smoking history or not, and for colon cancer screening by age or your risk factors and things like that. So it's very important to do those annual exams so you can get all your screenings done.

Otherwise you may not even have any symptoms and may not want to see a doctor until you get symptoms. But these kind of annual exams catch those diseases, you know, by screening for them.

Host: I recently had a situation that was confusing because I didn't know if I needed my primary care provider or urgent care or even the emergency department at my hospital. Understanding who to call was really difficult. Can you talk about determining which kind of care is best for different kinds of needs?

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): So, for most conditions that are not severe or life threatening, you could contact your primary care provider's office. And for certain conditions that can be handled by urgent care especially when your primary care office is closed, it's after hours or weekend hours, then you can definitely go to an urgent care as long as it's not life threatening or critical.

For example, if you're having chest pain or trouble breathing, I would recommend going to the emergency room. If you're having, if you've got a cut that needs to be looked at, but it's not profusely bleeding or not very deep cut, then you can go to your urgent care. And this is after hours and weekend hours, but if it's something that is not extremely urgent, but it needs attention even within the same day and it's during the office hours of your primary care provider, you can definitely reach your primary care provider. So it depends on the acuity of the problem, the urgency, as well as the time of the day that you're trying to reach somebody to get help for that problem.

Host: Well, doctor, thank you so much for joining us.

Shilpi Khosla, MD (Guest): You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

Host: That was Dr. Shilpi Khosla, Medical Director for Primary Care at the University of Maryland, Upper Chesapeake Health. Find more shows just like this one at umms.org.podcast and on YouTube. Thank you for listening to Live Greater, a health and wellness podcast brought to you by the University of Maryland Medical System. We look forward to you joining us again, and please share this on your social media.