While Quebec got rid of annual head-to-toe medical checkups for healthy adults 18 months ago, some Quebecers still feel a little uneasy about skipping the annual ritual.
Global News medical expert Dr. Mitch Shulman said that having grown up in a time when annual visits were the norm, he understands why some might feel nervous about forgoing the visit.
“I was brought up in a generation where if you didn’t have your annual visit to the doctor ‘what sort of person were you?’ You didn’t care about your health. You were an evil, nasty, horrible person,” he said. “Well, it turns out you weren’t.”
Shulman points to recent studies by the College of Family Physicians Canada and the Canadian Task Force on Preventative Health Care that suggest there is little value in the annual exam unless you are a child or have an underlying medical condition.
READ MORE: Annual checkups are not always effective for healthy people: report
“Children need to be seen on regular basis,” he said. Usually, before they go to school so you can check growth parameters, developmental milestones and bring them up to date with their immunizations.
Not only are annual exams unnecessary they can even be detrimental in certain instances.
“You’re just as likely to find something that isn’t really wrong — what we call a false-positive — that sets you off with all sorts of anxiety and you’re going on a wild goose chase, ” Shulman said. “You don’t need this.”
WATCH: Dr. Mitch Shulman on Global News Morning
Shulman said the focus is moving towards offering patients preventative health care packages.
READ MORE: Quebec ombudsman slams health-care reforms
A preventative health-care package entails sitting down with your doctor, or maybe a nurse practitioner, going through your full medical history including family history and personal risk factors and developing a strategy from there.
Some patients could be asked to come back every three to five years based on the assessment, while others could require more frequent followups.
“Let’s say you’re a smoker and I want to help you stop smoking,” Shulman said. “Maybe I see you every two to three months to reinforce the idea of stopping smoking.”
An added benefit of a preventative approach to health care according to Shulman, would be to free up resources.
“If you’re sick, you need me, you call the office and I’ll have more time because I’m not seeing all these people with their annual exams for no reason,” Shulman said.
WATCH: Doctor Pocket connects patients with physicians
Shulman suggested another way the system could be more effective.
“What if there was a web-based interactive portal,” Shulman asked. “You went on there and you could say you know that this is my family history, these are my risk factors, how often should I actually be seeing my doctor. Let me schedule my appointments based on that.”
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