Do Not Abuse Group Visits

In today’s highly competitive and challenging healthcare environment, as physicians and healthcare organizations alike try to leverage existing resources and do evermore with less, the potential for abuse of group visits looms very real. Healthcare organizations are struggling with the challenges of insufficient resources existing within the system to meet the quality, access, service, and patient satisfaction mandates—as well as the workload demands—facing them through traditional means alone (i.e., by hiring evermore physicians in a misguided attempt to meet these mandates and workload demands through individual appointments alone). They are increasingly recognizing that what is needed is a new tool for leveraging existing resources and better addressing all of these demands—which is something for which group visits are ideally suited. It is for this reason that, despite resistance to change and organizational inertia, group visit programs are gradually but progressively emerging—to enhance quality and service, to increase productivity, to leverage existing resources, to improve access and patient satisfaction, to strengthen the bottom line, and to better manage large, busy practices as well as chronic illnesses and high-risk patient populations.

But even the staunchest supporters of group care worry there is a potential for abuse. Organizations could attempt to force patients to attend multipatient meetings rather than providing them with individual care. Penny-pinching medical offices could give physicians bigger patient loads and order them to hold most of their exams in these efficient group settings. Such fears, however, have not yet materialized during the few years since some centers have tried it.

The doctor is in for group visits. San Jose Mercury News, Tuesday October 10, 2000, pp. D5, D7