Family Medicine is the most general of the primary care disciplines, as it does not exclude patients on the basis of organ system, sex or age.  The practice of family medicine has several distinguishing characteristics.

• The family physician provides continuity of care across time and across family generations.
• The family physician provides comprehensive care, dealing with both acute and chronic illnesses, often in the same office visit.
• The family physician provides preventative medical care, for example screening laboratory tests and immunization updates.
• The family physician is a patient advocate, serving to provide the patient with appropriate care, and appropriate medical services.

An important part of this role and the 21st century is interpreting the almost overwhelming amount of information available to patients and helping them make intelligent choices for their own and their family’s health.

The family physician coordinates care between outpatient and inpatient services, between medicine and allied health disciplines such as physical, occupational and speech therapy, visiting nurse activity and pharmacological needs, and arranging appropriate and timely testing and consultation.

The family physician manages complex interacting medical problems and frequently the member of the healthcare team that looks at coordination of services between multiple specialties and the prevention of interactions and treatments in one system that may harm a different system in a treatment by one specialist that may harm a different system.

All family physicians are trained in adult medical care, pediatric medical care, pre-operative assessment, prenatal care, obstetrics, psychiatry and behavioral medicine and office management.

Beyond these basic fields there is a wealth of other areas that any individual family physician may choose to include within practice.  These include inpatient hospital work, sports medicine, women’s health, college student health, occupational medicine, integrative medicine, medical informatics, academic medicine, underserved medicine (rural or urban), missionary medicine, healthcare management and addiction medicine, and geriatrics.  

The Department of Family and Community Medicine provides primary care to people of all ages. Outpatient care is performed at the University Physician Group locations . Our physicians admit to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State Children’s Hospital. Resident physicians in training provide patient care under direct supervision of faculty.