The term for this is patient-centered care.
This may sound like a strange term, but the traditional health care system is
often been designed and optimized around the needs of providers, not patients.
As a result, care can be inconvenient.
Patients have to wait for appointments and
may have to wait even once they arrive in the clinic.
All of this discourages coming, particularly for
routine preventative care.
Patient-centered care is designed around the needs of patients
who may even be able to be seen the same day they request an appointment.
This care is delivered by a team so
that routine problems that don't require a physician can be handled by a nurse or
other provider, again, on a much more convenient and timely basis.
A key tenet of patient-centered care is that all patients should have
a Primary Care Physician, or PCP.
This is usually a family physician, general internist or
OB-GYN for adults and a pediatrician for children.
Their job includes having a complete view of a patient and
coordinating the care delivered by the team or even other physicians.
In a well-coordinated healthcare system, every patient has a PCP.
Since they may not have the skills or
knowledge to manage all of the problems a patient like Marla has,
part of the PCP's job is to refer patients to specialists when needed but
still to coordinate and oversee all of their care.
In this last role,
the PCP is often referred to as The Gatekeeper, the person who makes
decisions about when their patients need expensive specialized care.