The Drop-In Group Medical Appointment Model: A Revolutionary Access Solution for Follow-Up Visits

Today’s rapidly changing managed healthcare environment has had a dramatic, and often negative, impact on the practices and professional satisfaction of physicians in both primary care and the medical subspecialties. While working as hard and efficiently as possible, many find themselves barely able to keep up and struggling with diminishing bottom lines. Physicians feel ill-equipped to handle any further increases in their already jam-packed caseloads, yet many feel that this is inevitable and just a matter of time. What is needed is a completely new paradigm for delivering medical care—a tool for working smarter, not harder—which is something for which the DIGMA model is particularly well equipped. DIGMAs enable providers to see dramatically more patients in the same amount of time (often three times as many), but accomplish this while simultaneously providing improved accessibility, max-packed visits, greater attention to patient education and psychosocial issues, and higher levels of patient and physician professional satisfaction. All three of today’s major group visit models (i.e., the DIGMA, CHCC, and PSMA models) provide new, innovative medical care delivery systems that are intended to be voluntary, efficient, holistic, interactive, cost-effective, and highly satisfying to patients and physicians alike.

The group appointment may seem like a tall order: See twice as many patients per hour while raising the quality of care, boosting patient satisfaction, and improving physician job satisfaction. But at several large group practices that have launched group appointments in recent years, many physicians have become firm believers in the efficiency of this unusual format… .The physician saves time by not having to repeat basic medical information or shuttle between exam rooms… .But physicians report that thousands of patients are participating because they appreciate the extended appointment time and the opportunity to exchange ideas with other patient. Moreover, patients often can be scheduled sooner for a group appointment than for an individual appointment… .Reimbursement has not been a problem, despite the unconventional format of group visits… .Further, there are no separate CPT codes for group visits, so insurers are obligated to pay for them at the same level as individual patient visits… .Although group visits are voluntary for physicians as well as for patients, officials report that many doctors are enthusiastic about the new approach.

Internal Medicine News, October 15, 2001, p. 39, Practice Trends, Leigh Page, “Group Visit Format Raises Efficiency and Eyebrows.”