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Count Me In: Tracking Days, Minutes of Activity Can Lead to More Active, Healthier Patients

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Is your physician asking you how many minutes of physical activity you’re engaging in each day? Are you getting 150 minutes of exercise per week? Through a clinical initiative called Exercise as a Vital Sign (EVS), Kaiser Permanente is now collecting and recording the exercise information in its electronic medical record and helping patients become more active .

EVS is designed to systematically ascertain patient-reported exercise levels and encourage patients during outpatient visits to become more active. It is also designed to combat inactivity which is reported to be the cause of 6 percent of the cases of coronary artery disease, 7 percent of type 2 diabetes, 10 percent of breast cancer, and 10 percent of colon cancer.

In this seven-part series titled, “Exercise as a Vital Sign in Primary Care,” author Latifat T. Apatira, MD, MPH, — a fourth-year internal medicine and preventive medicine resident at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Center — sheds light on an important clinical strategy to address obesity and physical inactivity. Part I of the series discusses how Kaiser Permanente gets its patients moving with EVS. Check it out here.

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