Doctors are faced with many challenges on a daily basis, and, naturally, one of those is the simple fact that there are only so many hours in the day in which to fit those challenges. Physicians are pressured to see more patients per hour in an industry that rewards efficiency and speed, while still needing to find a way to educate their patients about complex diseases and chronic illnesses, which can be difficult to do in 15 minute increments.<\/p>\n
While education is often best delivered in one-on-one personal engagements, common sense and practice has shown us that learning is most efficiently accomplished in group settings, such as what our children receive in their classrooms, or in the crowded lecture halls in colleges across the nation.<\/p>\n
In a group setting, an educator can address a group that shares the same learning goals, whether they be academic or practical. Many doctors are now using \u201cgroup visits\u201d to achieve similar goals with patients who share the same chronic condition, such as diabetes or heart disease. In the article \u201cHow Group Visits can Improve Chronic Condition Management,<\/a>\u201d as reported by Medical Economics, Marianna Sumego, MD, says, \u201cIn today\u2019s healthcare environment, it\u2019s challenging to simultaneously maintain access, engage patients, and improve quality of care. Group visits can help us address all three of those challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the article \u201cGroup Visits 101<\/a>,\u201d published in the AAFP, there are a few reasons why many doctors are adopting \u201cgroup visits\u201d as part of the practice\u2019s offerings. Group visits are thought to help increase physician productivity and decrease the practice\u2019s cost per visit. They can provide a break from traditional office visits, where doctors find themselves repeating the same advice and information to patients with shared medical conditions. Group visits can reduce backlogs in schedules that are typically clogged with low-acuity recheck appointments. And perhaps most importantly, they can provide improved care for patients with chronic conditions, and can lead to an increase in both patient satisfaction and compliance.<\/p>\n The AAFP article cites two studies that show that group-visit patients had fewer ER visits, visits to subspecialists, hospital admissions, and made fewer phone calls to doctors, while having an overall higher satisfaction rating with their care.<\/p>\n Anecdotal evidence suggests the same: patients thrive in groups.\u00a0Sumego continues<\/a>, \u201cThere\u2019s value in patients encouraging each other that we as physicians are not able to capture when we see them one-on-one\u2026one of the main benefits of shared medical appointments is to leverage the value of shared experiences among peers.\u201d<\/p>\n But be warned, there are challenges to implementing group visits in your arsenal of care.<\/p>\n Probably the most critical challenge is remaining HIPAA compliant in the group setting, with many physicians opting to have their group-visit patients sign confidentiality agreements and HIPAA disclosure forms, confirming that their participation in the group setting is voluntary and promising to keep all information confidential. Doctors will also have to make sure they can get reimbursed for group-visits which can be tricky from a billing perspective. In addition, coordinating a group of patients can be a logistical hurdle, and may lead to frustration if patients are required to wait on other members of the group, not to mention the task of having an adequate workspace where the group feels comfortable.<\/p>\n As reported by\u00a0Medical Economics<\/a>, Dennis Saver, MD, part of a 12-physician group practice, says, \u201cYou need a setting where you can host a group and there\u2019s a lot of prep work involved on the front end. But once it\u2019s up and running, it becomes easier to keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n Saver, who hosts group-visits in his employee lunchroom, says, \u201cYour team is critical and should be included in developing the workflow and the implementation plan from the beginning. Talk with everyone about what it will take to check in 12 patients at once.\u201d<\/p>\n He also reminds us that it\u2019s essential to identify someone within the practice\u2014whether it\u2019s a physician or another clinical staff member\u2014who can act as a facilitator. This person should have the skills to lead and direct interactive group discussions. \u201cGroup visits are not meant to be lectures,\u201d he notes, \u201cThe process should be fun and useful and encourage patients to share their personal experiences and insights with others.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, we once again get back to the issue of HIPAA and patient privacy, so any physician choosing to go down this path should discuss their plan-of-action with their lawyer and insurance company to make sure they are HIPAA compliant.<\/p>\n So what might one of these \u201cgroup-visits\u201d look like?<\/p>\n Medical Economics suggests that group visits typically include around a dozen patients who share the same chronic condition, such as weight loss or diabetes. A group visit will typically start the same as a normal office appointment, with clinicians taking vitals and adjusting medications in private, and then moving on to group presentations that will be relevant to the group. These presentations could be a forum for discussion on disease-related topics, or they could be more about fostering social interaction between patients, and the formation of support groups for patients with similar ailments.<\/p>\n The same article also gives a nice\u00a0\u201cbest practice\u201d list<\/a>, which should give any doctor a good starting point. Doctors are faced with many challenges on a daily basis, and, naturally, one of those is the simple fact that there are only so many hours in the day in which to fit those challenges. Physicians are pressured to see more patients per hour in an industry that rewards efficiency and speed, while still needing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practiceprotection.com\/physicians\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs a final statistic to mull, in 2006,\u00a0the AAFP cited a study<\/a>\u00a0by The Future of Family Medicine Project that suggested that group visits have the potential of generating an additional $15,411 per physician per year, while enabling patients to interact with, learn from, and encourage one another. They also reduce the redundancies that family physicians face in one-on-one sessions in which they have to essentially explain the same concept to similar patients. The work on the front-end to get group visits up and running appears to be fairly time-intensive, though it ultimately may be able to help physicians generate more income, deliver higher patient satisfaction, save physicians time, and most importantly, lead to better outcomes for patients.<\/p>\n\n