If your country has socialized or universal medical care, how often are you expected to go to the doctor?

Here in the UK, it is as often as you need to depending on your condition or illness. It could be monthly or never.

I go never, since I’m really lucky with my health and it’s not something I worry about. My mum is 73 and gets blood tests every few months.

I’m in the UK and I can make an appointment to see my GP (General Practitioner) just as often as is necessary and as I get older those appointments tend to become more frequent. I have my blood pressure and cholesterol checked once a year, when I was younger, I never used to bother. So far, I am not on any medication and I am in reasonably good health and if I don’t see my doctor at all this year, I will be quite happy.

I guess I’m am curious how often the doctor tells you to come in.

Maybe I should fix how I worded the Q.

What do they recommend if you are generally healthy?

What if you have something like high cholesterol (fairly common) or a slow thyroid, how often do they run blood tests and do you have to go to the doctor’s office, or can you just go to the lab?

Once a year, with primary care doctor, for a physical, once a month for blood test results , and follow up. I’m from Canada. Pharmacy every two weeks.

Id only go to the doctor when i was concerned about something and need their advice.

There are national screening programmes for bowel cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer etc. Generally men are invited to a health screening at 40 (because women tend to contact the medical profession when they’re pregnant and we use that as an excuse to test them for other stuff, while men are very good at ignoring stuff) But if you are generally healthy why would you want to see the doctor?

High cholesterol – you’d get repeat bloods 2 to 3 months after staring treatment then every cholesterol checked every 12 months as part of an annual medication review. If you have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease maybe more often.

Hypothyroidism – for adults you expect them to check bloods every 3 months after staring treatment until levels are back to normal and then every year.
Depending on what your condition is and how well it is managed will change how frequently your doctor wants to see you.

For the annual checks your doctors office will probably arrange for the bloods to be taken either at your doctors office, another surgery that does a lot of blood tests or a local hospital in advance of the appointment to see the doctor to discuss the results.

Petty similar to ours. The problem here is finding a cotor; there aren’t enough primary care physicians these days.

* Pretty and doctor. Sorry

I have to see him every three months, to renew my arthritis prescription, I have asked for 6months or longer and he keeps refusing. CANADA

@janbb Where I live a lot of GP’s have patients make appointments every 3 months and I think it’s a racket and sometimes fraud.

@JLeslie Aha. My GP, when I had one, wanted me to come in every 4 months and I asked why once. He said because some of my prescriptions were controlled substances and it was a Medicare requirement. (Although with the previous GP, I had only to call and request a renewal.)

@janbb In your situation (with the two doctors), I’d be curious which one was correct, the one saying it was a Medicare requirement or the one who lets you call to request a renewal.

What I like about my primary care doctor is he has me come in once a year for bloodwork, and he gives me a year’s worth of prescriptions (I only take one med). If for some reason the next appointment is postponed so it’s more than a year between visits, I call him and tell him I need the new prescription for another two or three months and he does it.

I have friends who say their doctor makes them come in to go over their bloodwork (so a visit to talk about what’s going on and then a visit to go over bloodwork). To me, that’s bullshit. I don’t see a need for two visits.

I’m on Kaiser in the US. My PCP wants me to come in or do blood test once a year.