Videos
Physicians from Premier Health Family Care of Vandalia answer your frequently asked health questions.
How can a person tell the difference between allergies and a cold?
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How can a person tell the difference between allergies and a cold?
What are some tips for keeping allergy symptoms under control?
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What are some tips for keeping allergy symptoms under control?
How are food and skin allergies diagnosed?
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How are food and skin allergies diagnosed?
What happens to our body when we have an asthma attack?
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What happens to the body when person has an asthma attack?
Health Tips - Advanced Practice Providers
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Health Tips - Advanced Practice Providers
Wilson: All Nurse Practitioners in our office we see patients just like any of the physicians do. We have our own patient panels but in our office specifically and pretty much everywhere now, we see everybody's patients. And so any acute visit, if you're sick, your long-term, your preventative visits, your follow-up visits all of that stuff. We can do just about everything that the physicians can do in the office so we manage everything.
Bright: APRNs at this point, in Ohio, do have to have a collaborating agreement with the physician so we definitely have kept by that law and have a standard collaboration that we have signed in basically that just recognizes one physician as our doctor that backs us up. Dr. Allen is that for both Sarah and myself. In this setting it has been a huge asset to have that because there are things that may not have seen yet or come across and he is always there to help us in those situations and then it also allows us to work together as a team.
Allen: So the APPs in our office play a role very similar to any other provider. We utilize the APPs in our office to see patients and handle any of the clinical problems that may be arisen or may come up. We really have taken our approach in this office to treat them as much like any other provider, which has been a little bit different than some other offices. They do carry their own panels, they see overflow, they do everything that anybody else would do and everything that I do day-to-day. There's... the credentials and the letters are a little different, there's some orders that I have to sign because I'm the physician in the office, but overall they do essentially 95% of the same work that I do every day.
Allen: So the advantage for the patient in this relationship is that it really allows the patient access to healthcare that they may not have been able to get. I'm one person, I have a limit of how much I can do and see every day. If we find good people around us that can help and, for lack of a better term, extend that ability to take care of the patient, that's their advantage. They have that extension. If you think about these folks here, very similar personalities to mine, very similar way they take care of patients, that allows us now, between the three of us to see maybe 75 patients a day as opposed to 25 for just me. Which I think is very important for the patients; it's access to care.
Wilson: By allowing APPs to bridge that gap a little bit, because there aren't enough family physicians to cover those needs, we kind of can help fill that gap. We can help with a lot of the care needs and things like that, which hopefully are going to keep them from getting to the point where they need to be hospitalized.
Bright: That's the great thing about family practice is that you get to see people sometimes even before they have a problem and you get to maybe help them prevent that problem. That was a big reason for me in choosing to pursue a further degree.