Why Try Group Visits in Your Practice?

Abstract

Faced with the multiple pressures and harsh economic realities of today’s highly competitive healthcare environment (double digit annual increases in the cost of care, ongoing access problems, rapid change, large practices, less time per patient, the expanding medical needs of an aging patient population, decreasing reimbursements, weakening bottom lines, etc.), physicians and healthcare organizations alike are grappling to meet these modern challenges through innovative new approaches to delivering accessible, high-quality, and high-value medical care. In this challenging environment, a rare combination of benefits makes the Drop-In Group Medical Appointment (DIGMA), Cooperative Health Care Clinic (CHCC), and Physicals Shared Medical Appointment (PSMA) group visit models exciting and unique. It is the remarkable set of benefits that they offer to patients, physicians, and organizations, plus the fact that these group visit models work well not only together but also with other healthcare innovations—such as Advanced Clinic Access (ACA), Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), electronic medical records (EMR), Toyota lean, chronic disease management, etc.—that has enabled DIGMAs, CHCCs, and PSMAs to consistently work well in a wide variety of applications in actual practice.