Preventive Medicine

Preventive medicine or preventive care consists of measures taken to prevent diseases, (or injuries) rather than curing them or treating their symptoms. This contrasts in method with curative and palliative medicine, and in scope with public health methods (which work at the level of population health rather than individual health). Occupational medicine operates very often within the preventive medicine.

Increased use of preventive care (e.g., regular doctor visits) is one way of reducing health care spending. Official budget scores of U.S. universal health care proposals state that most of its savings would be from providing preventive care to the uninsured. Canadian physicians, who provide universal health care including preventive care, found that they could lower their total health care expenditures by 40% simply by increasing appropriate and reducing inappropriate preventive care measures. A single uninsured cancer patient diagnosed at stage four can incur over half a million dollars in hospital bills in a few months, which must be borne by all other health care consumers, when the same diagnosis at stage one with preventive screening would cost much less. However, preventive care is typically provided to many people who would never become ill, and for those who would have become ill, it is partially offset by the health care costs during additional years of life.