Review: Periodic health examination increases delivery of some clinical preventive services and reduces patient worry

摘要

The review by Boulware and colleagues touched on 2 central questionsnin preventive health care. First, does each individual component of thenPHE (such as Papanicolaou smear or blood pressure measurement), ifnactually done and coupled with follow-up care, improve health outcomes?nSecond, does providing preventive health care during periodicnvisits for that purpose alone (variously called health maintenance visitsnor, misleadingly, “annual physicals”) produce higher rates of preventivencare than adding this agenda to visits for acute and chronic illness?