Periodic preventive health visits: a more appropriate approach to delivering preventive services

The annual checkup is a long-established tradition in North America. Typically this visit entails a review of the patient’s health history, medications, allergies, and organ systems, as well as a “complete” physical examination that is sometimes followed by laboratory testing and discussion of health risks, lifestyle behaviour, and social situation. These visits consume substantial time and resources. Whether or not they provide health benefits that justify this effort has been much debated.1–