Prevention

What is prevention?

Prevention in health care focuses on the health of individuals, communities, and specific populations. It includes all measures to protect, promote and maintain health and well-being and to prevent illness, disability and death.

Prevention in practice requires Gesundheitspunkt to expand its patient-centered approach from individuals and families to the entire patient population registered with the GPO.

Prevention and coordinated health care

Prevention requires teamwork within the health point and is one of our core missions because we have the ability to get patients to

• Understand the factors that influence health across the lifespan.
• Change their lifestyle (e.g. smoking, diet, alcohol, physical activity)
• Undergo risk assessment (e.g., cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporotic fractures).
• Participation in preventive screenings (e.g., breast cancer, colorectal cancer, mental health).
• Self-management of chronic diseases
• Participation in measures/programs to prevent loss of function
• To pay more attention to their health

Prevention: My blood pressure clinic

Sina Schuler

High blood pressure is one of the main causes of health problems in Switzerland. One in four adults in our country has high blood pressure - that's around 1.5 million people. Of the 5600 patients registered at the Gesundheitspunkt, 1032 suffer from high blood pressure.

Hypertension that persists for months and years damages the heart and blood vessels: The blood vessels harden and thicken, resulting in arteriosclerosis. The risk of a heart attack or stroke increases by a factor of two to ten. Consequential diseases such as cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac insufficiency, renal insufficiency, occlusion of the arteries in the legs (PAD) and visual impairment can occur.

Ideal hypertension management involves checking a patient's blood pressure (BP) in the office or ensuring that the patient is using a validated blood pressure monitor correctly at home. Furthermore, regular measurements are needed to detect blood pressure values that are above the target value. In this case, the treatment plan must be adjusted and discussed with the patient. This is followed by monitoring the effect of the prescribed medication until the patients have reached their blood pressure target value within the framework of our national guidelines.

Despite this clear treatment pathway, achieving blood pressure targets has proven to be difficult. Barriers include sub-optimal workflows in GP practices, limited staff resources, multiple competing patient concerns and limited appointment availability. Focusing only on the individual dynamics of the physician-patient encounter limits the potential to improve hypertension outcomes. Instead, better hypertension control requires a team-based and patient-centered approach and the development of workflows outside of typical physician consultations.

With our hypertension clinic, we are once again breaking new ground in the conviction that this is an important way of implementing prevention. I look forward to being at your disposal as your blood pressure coordinator.

Proactive medical prevention

All people registered in our GPO are also actively targeted for preventive measures through electronic recording of their specific health findings. If a need is identified, the patient is made aware by our team that, for example, a vaccination, a precautionary colonoscopy or laboratory analyses are scientifically recommended to prevent cardiovascular problems or cancer.

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Last Updated on 22. December 2023 by eschalch