Patients, doctors turn to care in groups

[wdlove]

With patients piling up in the waiting room and doctors struggling to provide good care during ever-shorter office visits, physicians are increasingly turning to an alternative: seeing patients in a group setting.

The shared medical appointment or group office visit, which typically lasts at least 90 minutes, allows the doctor and an assistant to provide individualized medical care with a dose of education and peer support to as many as 20 patients at a time.

Nationally, doctors estimate that thousands of groups are underway, backed by such major institutions as the Department of Veterans Affairs and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire.

In Massachusetts, doctors at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Boston Medical Center, and several community health centers are among those offering groups, primarily for patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, arthritis, fertility problems, and lung disease.

Doctors' interest in the concept has taken off in the last three years, according to Dr. John Scott, a University of Colorado geriatrician who ran the first group in 1991 and has recently given how-to presentations at major medical conventions.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/06/22/patients_doctors_turn_to_care_in_groups/

 

[MongoTheGeek]

With patients piling up in the waiting room and doctors struggling to provide good care during ever-shorter office visits, physicians are increasingly turning to an alternative: seeing patients in a group setting.

I spent a few months in a tragic little room called waiting room b. In there we sat around and watched each other die.

On the other hand I spent a few months in radiation therapy. There was a lot of laughing and joy.

 

[wdlove]

Group sessions work very well for mental health patients. If they have the same privacy issues, that what is said here stays here. A patient will still need to have some private time with his/her physician.