Proponents argue the appointments, for such conditions as diabetes, obesity and liver disease, also ease the provider shortage, especially in low-income communities, and help providers avoid repeating the same information throughout the day.
“Group visits have so much to offer busy, backlogged and harried physicians,” Edward Noffsinger, a California psychologist and consultant on group visits, told Kaiser Health News. “They can get off the treadmill and sit down for one and a half hours with a group of patients.”
But not everyone completely embraces the idea. Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit based in Santa Monica, Calif., said educating multiple patients may be valuable, but treating individuals in a group is a means to “squeeze the patient and wring costs out of the healthcare system,” according to the report.
Kaiser Health News notes that group visits aren’t uniformly covered by insurers, but some plans pay for the care.
