Objective - to study the knowledge, readiness, and attitude of the local physicians of a polyclinic towards preventing cardiovascular diseases, modifying their major risk factors (RFs), and fulfilling the tasks of long-term follow-up in outpatients. Subject and methods. Surveys were made in all local physicians (n=346; response rate, 98.0%) and general practitioners (n=57; response rate, 65.5%) from primary health care (PHC) facilities in Tula and its region. The mean age of the local physicians and general practitioners was 50.1 and 52.0 years, respectively. Results. Most (63%) respondents answered that they had chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) with comorbidity rates of 1.5-1.6%. 73.2% of the respondents were fully followed up; 2.9% deemed it unnecessary; 6.1% had no time for this. Of the physicians followed up, 7.1% did not know their health group; 7.7% did not assess the level of their cardiovascular risk. Virtually all (99%) the physicians in their daily practice took part in a follow-up, during which there was an average of 6.4-7.0 patients; the mean duration of this procedure was 18-19 min; that of a brief preventive counseling (BPC) was 12.1-14.0 min, which was appreciated as useful and useless by 78.1 and 9%, respectively; and only 57.6% of the asked physicians deemed that their patients perceived BPC information with interest and attention. During follow-ups, 94.5% of the physicians referred patients to in-depth preventive counselling (IPC), but only 58.6% considered that IPC had a positive impact on patient compliance; however, the PHC physicians were not informed about the results of IPC. It was shown that it was necessary to improve preventive activity and the level of knowledge in PHC physicians on counseling patients with RFs. Conclusion. The results of this survey were similar to those of identical ones previously conducted in Moscow; showing insignificant interregional differences, both PHC physicians and healthcare workers from medical prevention departments/rooms and health centers have recently continued to make a poor preventive activity in modifying RFs. The authors formulated the key components of the concept of the preventive activity of physicians, which encompassed their attitude towards their own health, RFs, preventive counseling technologies, prophylactic medical examination and follow-up, and patients; professional competence in the problems of prophylaxis (knowledge, skills, abilities, and practice in modifying RF and implementing other preventive measures; the level of need to improve professional competence, including the prophylactic counselling of patients; interaction and continuity of various structures of PHC facilities in providing preventive care.