What Are The Benefits To Having One Physician For Your Entire Family?

What's Up, Doc? is a weekly health segment on WROK sponsored by MercyHealth. Each week they highlight a different doctor/healthcare professional to come on our show and talk to us about their specialty. It has turned into one of our favorite segments. All of our doctors have exhibited a "human" side that people don't always get to see with their physicians. We encourage you to check out some of our past episodes here. We've done about 30 of these segments highlighting everything from Lyme disease to hernia repair to finding a health care plan and everything else in between. We've learned a lot and hope you can too.

This week's guest on What's Up, Doc? is Dr. Yaser Mustafa. Dr. Mustafa is a family medicine physician with Mercyhealth. He joined today's show to talk to us about the benefits of having one physician for generations of families and some services offered by family physicians that you might not be aware of.

The obvious benefit in having a family doctor for generations is that doctor gets to know the family personally. They might see a genetic trait that's being passed down through generations that might result in a different diagnosis or treatment from a physician that is starting with a blank slate.

They also know the medical history of your family and might suggest you do something sooner or different than the general population. Dr. Mustafa brought up the example of colon cancer screenings. If he has a patient that has a history of colon problems in the family, that's just something he knows and doesn't have to depend on a patient to share that information with him. He can suggest earlier screenings or even make sure that the screening is more thorough than others if he thinks the risk is higher.

Does your family have a family physician yet? If not, now's the right time to get the ball rolling. You can contact Dr. Mustafa's office by contacting Mercyhealth.

We thank Dr. Mustafa for his time and look forward to our next guest on What's Up, Doc?

A new episode of What's Up, Doc? airs every Thursday morning at 8:35 on 1440 WROK.