Community Medicine

Enhancing Community Wellness

Integrative medicine has emerged as a transformative approach to healthcare that combines conventional medical practices with complementary therapies and mind-body interventions. Its holistic nature treats patients as individuals, empowering them to take charge of their well-being. It is time to bring the benefits of integrative medicine to our community, fostering a culture of wellness and resilience.

Group Medical Visits

What is it?

A shared medical appointment, also known as a group visit, occurs when multiple patients are seen as a group for follow-up care or management of chronic conditions. These visits are voluntary for patients and provide a secure but interactive setting in which patients have improved access to their physicians, the benefit of counseling with additional members of a health care team (for example a behaviorist, nutritionist, or health educator), and can share experiences and advice with one another.

What are the benefits

  • Reduced health care costs

  • Greater patient and clinician satisfaction

  • Patient empowerment

  • Greater patient compliance

  • Reduced repeat hospital admissions

  • Fewer emergency room and sub-specialist visits

Randomized trials have shown that diabetic patients involved in group visits achieved better HbA1c levels than patients in a control group.

Other studies of group education in diabetes have also found that HbA1c levels in the intervention groups were better than those of control groups; they also found evidence of improvements in patient self-care and satisfaction, self-efficacy, and body weight and non-fasting triglyceride levels.

Studies show that patients were more satisfied with their care; had lower care costs; and had fewer ER visits, sub-specialist visits, and calls to physicians. Also, participating physicians were more satisfied with caring for older patients than comparison physicians who relied on standard one-to-one interactions with their patients