UCLA Health Primary Care Services: Comprehensive and Convenient Healthcare for You and Your Family
UCLA Health offers a wide range of primary care services designed to provide comprehensive, personalized, and convenient healthcare for individuals and families throughout Southern California. With a focus on building strong patient-provider relationships, UCLA Health ensures that patients receive the right care, at the right time, and in the most appropriate setting. Whether you're a student at UCLA, a busy professional, or a senior seeking specialized care, UCLA Health has a primary care solution to meet your needs.
The Importance of Primary Care
Establishing a relationship with a primary care provider (PCP) is a cornerstone of maintaining good health. Regular check-ups and wellness visits are essential for several reasons:
- Preventive Care: These visits allow your healthcare team to focus on health education, disease prevention, and health maintenance.
- Personalized Care: Your PCP gets to know your family health history, lifestyle, and healthcare goals, enabling them to provide tailored advice and treatment.
- Early Detection: Routine screenings and check-ups can help detect potential health problems early, when they are often easier to treat.
- Continuity of Care: A long-term relationship with a PCP ensures that you receive coordinated care, especially if you have chronic conditions or require specialist referrals.
Primary Care Services at UCLA Health
UCLA Health's primary care services encompass a broad spectrum of offerings, catering to patients of all ages and health needs. These services include:
- Comprehensive Care: UCLA Health PCPs are board-certified in internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, or both internal medicine and pediatrics, ensuring they are qualified to care for everyone in the family.
- Preventive Care: This includes immunizations, routine screenings for cancer and other diseases, and discussions about age-appropriate cancer screening tests. Preventive care also includes checking blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol based on screening guidelines, evaluations for older adults (such as fall risk, hearing loss, brief assessment for memory loss, advance directives), routine vaccinations (flu, COVID-19, pneumonia, etc.), measuring height and weight, and depression screening.
- Management of Chronic Conditions: PCPs help patients manage chronic medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, anemia, allergies, asthma, and high blood pressure.
- Treatment of Acute Illnesses: UCLA Health PCPs treat common and acute medical conditions, such as ear infections, rashes, gastrointestinal problems, and viruses like the flu and coronavirus (COVID-19). They also address accidents and injuries, including minor burns, bug bites, cuts, sprains, and strains.
- Behavioral Health Services: Addressing mental and emotional well-being is an integral part of primary care. UCLA Health offers behavioral health services to address conditions like anxiety and depression.
- Geriatric Care: UCLA Health provides specialized care for older adults, addressing their unique health needs and challenges.
- Newborn Care: Comprehensive care is available for newborns, ensuring a healthy start to life.
- Palliative Care: UCLA Health offers palliative care services to improve the quality of life for patients with serious illnesses.
- Well-Woman Care: Addressing the specific healthcare needs of women is a priority. UCLA Health offers well-woman care services, including preventive screenings and reproductive health services.
- Travel Medicine: For those planning international travel, UCLA Health provides travel medicine services, including necessary immunizations and advice on staying healthy abroad.
Convenience and Accessibility
UCLA Health is committed to making primary care accessible and convenient for patients. This commitment is reflected in several ways:
- Extensive Network: With more than 50 primary care clinics throughout Southern California and over two dozen clinics providing primary care to children, patients can easily find a skilled doctor near them.
- Flexible Scheduling: Many practices offer extended hours, virtual visits, weekend appointments, and flexible scheduling to accommodate busy lifestyles.
- On-Site Services: Many primary care practices offer on-site imaging, blood draws and lab work, behavioral health services and pharmacy consultations. Some also have dermatology, cardiology and cardiac imaging, endocrinology and diabetes care, and other UCLA Health specialty physicians right in the same building.
Coordinated Care
UCLA Health emphasizes coordinated care to ensure that patients receive seamless and comprehensive treatment. Your PCP acts as the leader of your healthcare team, coordinating your care with other specialists and programs within the UCLA Health network. This includes:
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- Referrals to Specialists: When necessary, your PCP will make referrals to specialists and oversee and coordinate your care with them.
- Medication Management: Your PCP manages your medications, adjusts dosages, and orders refills.
- Shared Decision Making: Your PCP learns your values and preferences to help with shared decision-making about your treatment plan.
The Ashe Center: Primary Care for UCLA Students
For UCLA students, The Ashe Center serves as the primary care medical home. Upon their first visit, all students are assigned to a Primary Care Provider (PCP) who leads the health care team that coordinates all aspects of their preventive, acute and chronic needs using the best available evidence and appropriate technology. These relationships offer comfort, convenience, and optimal health throughout their time as a student at UCLA. PCPs at the Ashe Center are physicians, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants with training in family practice, pediatrics, or internal medicine. Every patient has a health care team that consists of the PCP, medical assistants, license vocational nurses, clinical coordinators, and registered nurses. All non-emergency care is coordinated through the Ashe PCP, including referrals to specialists.
Students can schedule appointments online (MyStudentChart) or by phone (310) 825-4073 during business hours. The Ashe Center also offers Telehealth Visits with Ashe Center providers, accessible through MyStudentChart.
Primary Care at Home (PCAH) Program
The Primary Care at Home (PCAH) Program delivers coordinated primary care services to patients in the comfort of their own home. This unique program leverages telehealth and an interdisciplinary team approach to expand support and access to care, especially for patients who may have difficulty traveling to medical facilities. The PCAH program provides ongoing care management support to help patients navigate the many offerings available at UCLA Health and ensure continuity of care. The UCLA Health care team of nurse practitioners, registered nurses, social workers, program coordinators, and supervising physicians are dedicated to helping patients receive exceptional care and stay healthy.
A board-certified nurse practitioner will come to your home for an initial visit that will last approximately 45-60 minutes. During this visit, the nurse practitioner will ask you questions about your health goals. Following home visits, your primary care physician will be kept in the loop and a member of the care team will follow up to coordinate care. Future visits will focus on the information provided during the initial home visit, as well as other health questions or needs you may have. Patients can expect to receive phone calls or visits from other members of the care team to ensure their health concerns are addressed. The PCAH Program can help patients receive the comprehensive support they need to manage their chronic conditions.
Understanding the Difference Between Preventive and Diagnostic Care
It's important to understand the difference between preventive care and follow-up or diagnostic care, as they may be billed differently by your insurance provider.
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- Preventive Care: This includes routine screenings, vaccinations, and counseling aimed at preventing illness and maintaining health.
- Diagnostic Care: This involves evaluating new symptoms or managing existing medical conditions.
For example, if you schedule an annual check-up and discuss new joint pain with your doctor, the appointment may start as preventive care but turn into diagnostic care or treatment management. While most health insurances cover preventive care without a share of cost, they donât always cover diagnostic care (for new symptoms) or follow-up care (for acute or chronic disease management) without a share of cost, such as a copay or deductible. Even for preventive care, there may be some charges for certain tests provided as a part of the preventive care evaluation.
When scheduling an appointment with your PCP, it is always best to let the office know why youâre making the appointment. Tell the office if this is only for preventive care or if you also have medical conditions or concerns that you would like to talk about.
Preventive care does not include diagnosing, discussing or treating new symptoms, managing chronic diseases (such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, dementia, etc.), or following up on previously diagnosed conditions.
Choosing UCLA Health for Your Primary Care Needs
UCLA Health offers a comprehensive and patient-centered approach to primary care, with a focus on prevention, early detection, and coordinated treatment. With a wide network of skilled physicians, convenient locations, and a commitment to personalized care, UCLA Health is an excellent choice for individuals and families seeking to optimize their health and well-being.
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