The annual physical isn’t just a checkbox. Here’s what actually happens, what it tells you, and why doing it every year changes the trajectory of your health.

Paule Joseph, PhD, MBA, CRNP, FAAN

Founder, Anchor Health

Most people treat the annual wellness visit as a box to check. Go once a year, get cleared, move on. But when it’s done well — with a provider who has time to actually listen — it’s one of the most useful clinical conversations you can have. It’s not just about finding what’s wrong. It’s about understanding where your health stands right now, what the data is telling you, and what shifts to make before you feel anything at all.

That’s what preventive care means. Not reacting to a crisis. Staying ahead of one.

The structure varies slightly by age, sex, and medical history — but most primary care wellness visits cover the same core ground.

Vital Signs

The visit starts with measurements: blood pressure, heart rate, weight, height, BMI, and sometimes oxygen saturation. These are baseline readings — and over time, the trend matters more than any single number. A blood pressure that’s crept up by 10 points over three years is more significant than a single reading that looks «normal.»

Health History Review

Your provider reviews your medical history, current medications, family history, and any ongoing conditions. For new patients, this is an in-depth intake. For established patients, it’s an update — what’s changed, what’s new, what you haven’t gotten around to mentioning.

Screenings

Based on your age, sex, and risk factors, your provider recommends appropriate screenings. These might include:

Not every screening applies to every patient. A tailored approach is more useful — and more honest — than a one-size-fits-all checklist. If you have specific concerns about women’s health or hormonal changes, those are part of this conversation too — see our women’s health page for more on what that care looks like.

Medication and Immunization Review

Are your current medications still the right ones? Are the doses correct? Are there interactions to watch? These questions surface at the wellness visit — often catching issues that would otherwise go unnoticed for another year. Vaccines are also reviewed based on your schedule: flu, shingles, pneumonia, COVID, and Tdap. These aren’t optional footnotes. They’re part of a complete picture of where your health stands.

The Conversation About Your Actual Life

This is where the quality of care separates. The best wellness visits don’t end at the numbers. They include an honest conversation about how you’re sleeping, managing stress, eating, and moving. These aren’t soft add-ons — they’re clinical signals. Chronic fatigue, disrupted sleep, and persistent low mood are data points, not personal complaints.

Annual Wellness Visits via Telehealth

A telehealth wellness visit follows the same clinical framework as an in-person visit. Your provider reviews your vitals (you can take your own blood pressure at home with a cuff available at any pharmacy), orders labs through a local draw site, and covers the full clinical assessment via secure video.

What telehealth changes is friction. No driving, no waiting room, no missing work for a 40-minute appointment. The conversation happens in a space where you’re comfortable — which often means you talk more openly, mention things you’d otherwise skip, and actually use the time.

At Anchor Health, annual wellness visits via telehealth are available to patients across Maryland — Rockville, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Baltimore, Annapolis, Frederick, and anywhere else in the state. We accept most major insurance plans and are HSA-eligible for self-pay patients. What we call Anchored Care™ means you’re working with the same provider every time — not a rotation of strangers who have to start from scratch at each visit.

Who Should Get One — and How Often

Annual wellness visits are recommended for adults every year, and more frequently if you’re managing a chronic condition like diabetes, hypertension, or thyroid disease. Children and adolescents follow their own well-child visit schedule at defined intervals.

If you haven’t had a wellness visit in more than a year, this is the right time to schedule one. Not because something is wrong — but because the entire point of preventive care is to find out before something is.

Frequently Asked Questions