Rochelle Community Hospital is working to make the community aware of the importance of being established with a general health provider through its Family Healthcare Clinic for individual or family healthcare.

RCH doctors and nurse practitioners have availability for new patients in their practices, with services including annual visits for blood work and check ups, immunizations, and a home base for care in the event of a sudden or chronic illness, RCH’s Graham Isaacson, D.O., said Aug. 25.

Isaacson said benefits of having a primary care provider include finding and treating diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure before they become a problem, building a relationship with familiarity and trust, cancer screenings and immunizations for shingles, pneumonia or flu, and having someone to organize patient needs such as visits to specialists.

“There are a lot of benefits to having a primary care provider,” Isaacson said. “One of the biggest things is trying to find and treat diseases before they become a problem. You might not know that anything is wrong or you might not have any symptoms, but we can screen people for things they might not know they have, such as diabetes or high blood pressure. We can do blood work to find out if patients have high cholesterol. Finding these things early before someone has symptoms can be beneficial in helping to prevent strokes, heart attacks, complications from diabetes and things like that. A lot of these things don’t show symptoms until something scary like a heart attack happens.”

Regular checkups are important, even if patients aren’t experiencing a symptom that is giving them concerns, Isaacson said. In his career he’s seen patients that have come in to see a doctor for the first time in 20 years that were then diagnosed with high blood pressure or diabetes that went unknown.

“You really can feel totally fine and have a lot of things going on on the inside that your body is doing a good job of covering for,” Isaacson said. “The sooner we can find those things, the sooner we can get you treated for them and the less likely you are to end up in the hospital a few years down the line. It’s important to have regular check ins for things like the heart, blood pressure and basic labs.”

Isaacson has been building his practice since he came to work at the RCH Family Healthcare Clinic about a year ago. RCH also has a new physician assistant in Kristi Gonzales that is building a practice as well.

More people in the community having an established healthcare provider can also help to take burden off of the RCH convenient care and emergency departments and make for shorter waits for patients who utilize same-day appointments with their established provider instead for those needs.

“A lot of times people go to our convenient care or emergency room when they have an ear infection or strep throat that aren’t necessarily emergent,” Isaacson said. “Having a primary care provider you can come in and see for a same-day appointment for those things benefits the patient and the hospital. It’s typically much cheaper to see a primary care doctor compared to the emergency room and you don’t have to wait in long lines and you get the care you need. And you’re not overtaxing the emergency room.”

General health providers at RCH can also refer patients easily to other specialties and services offered in the hospital, including cardiologists, kidney doctors, a podiatrist, dermatologist and urologist that offer care to patients a few days a week, and a new behavioral health clinic.

Building relationships with patients is Isaacson’s favorite aspect of being a primary care physician and doing family medicine.

“Some people I see once a year and some people I see every month,” Isaacson said. “I’ve been able to build a lot of great relationships in the past 12 months. It makes a difference. I know my patients really well and they know me and what to expect. You get better care when you have a good relationship with your doctor.”

Isaacson said regular checkups can prevent more serious healthcare problems from compounding after going unchecked. If an issue like high blood pressure can be regulated with one medication soon, that can prevent having to be on more medications or more potential to suffer a stroke or heart attack in the future.

Fear of the unknown, not having time, potential high costs and trust issues are among the reasons Isaacson estimates more people don’t see a primary care provider. RCH offers some evening hours for patients with time constraints and wants to reach out and build trust with new patients.

High-risk issues like high blood pressure and high blood sugar that can cause strokes and diabetes can often go unnoticed over time without regular checkups, Isaacson said. The RCH family practice provider wants people in the community to avoid strokes that can make it hard to talk, eat and work, and to avoid diabetes that can cause kidney problems and lead to dialysis, vision loss and nerve pain.

“Every single week I see patients that have waited too long to come and see a doctor,” Isaacson said. “I see people all the time that have sky high blood pressure or diabetes. I’ve seen people that have had unchecked diabetes for years and years. It happens a lot. Unfortunately, it happens a lot because people didn’t have insurance for many years or couldn’t afford to come in. Then they finally come in and we’re playing catch up. It’s a very common occurrence. I see people all the time that haven’t seen a doctor in decades. I want people to know that they’re not the only ones coming in that haven’t seen a doctor in many years. We don’t judge people. We figure out what needs to be done and we start taking care of them.”