Scripps Health: Tips on Choosing the Right Primary Care Doctor

A primary care physician is a general practitioner.
We're the ones that you see when you fall ill in the non-acute, non-emergent setting. We're the ones who will be doing your routine
visits, your preventive medicine visits, your annual physicals and we're also going to be the ones who help coordinate your care.
There are a lot of different ways to find your primary care doctor. You can call your insurance and ask them to
assign you to a primary care doctor.
You can ask your friends. Ask your family, find a
doctor who you're gonna be comfortable with and if you get a recommendation from someone you trust, it is more likely to be someone who
you're gonna feel comfortable with and trust as well. You can go on to the scripps.org website and click on 'Find a Doctor.'
There's a lot of different ways to look for doctors through the website.
When you choose a primary care doctor, there's a lot of different factors to consider.
One of the biggest ones is going to be location.
You want to find a doctor who's going to be either close to your home, close to your work and
easy to get to. You don't want to be driving 45 minutes when you feel ill to go see your primary care doctor.
The other thing to consider is gender.
Do you want to see a male or a female physician or do you not care? Does it really matter to you?
Doctors' hours are really important as well. Does your doctor work Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 5:00?
Do they have extended hours available that fit your work schedule? And
your doctor's languages as well. If you don't speak English or English is not your primary language,
you might want to find a doctor who is able to
speak a second language and your language because then you wouldn't have to go through a third-person translator. We have translator services available,
of course, but it just improves your care and
doctor-patient relationship in general if you are able to have a two-way conversation with just the two of you and not a third party.
There are a couple different primary care doctors available. I'm an internal medicine doctor. I see patients
ages 18 and up. My pediatrician
colleagues are the ones who see kids ages 18 and down basically, from birth to 18.
We also have family medicine practitioners who see both kids and adults.
There are geriatric doctors who see the elderly, 60 and older.