Shared Medical Appointments – Pros and Cons

A shared medical appointment (SMA) offers a 90-minute medical visit that brings patients with common needs together with the doctor, nurse practitioner and a full multidisciplinary care team. It allows physicians to observe and treat groups of patients with similar needs simultaneously, which helps in managing a heavy influx of patients. Patient appointment scheduling and availability are also improved with this option. Moreover, peer pressure has proved useful to promote healthy behaviors among patients.

Benefits of SMA

• Physicians Can Treat More Patients – A SMA may include up to 12 patients with similar chronic conditions which allows the physician to treat more persons in the course of a day or week. An individual appointment could take up to 15 to 30 minutes of consultation, whereas a shared appointment is 90 minutes long, which is less than if each patient were seen individually.
• Increased Availability of Appointments – Since persons with similar medical conditions are grouped under one appointment, the physician gets more time to individually treat patients with other conditions. This helps to improve appointment availability as it avoids repeated consultations several times a day for people with similar ailments. This helps physicians handle backlog, provides more time for patient education, and increases access to care by providing more appointment slots within a given time period.
• Unaltered Insurance Reimbursements – In shared medical visits, medical billing is done as for an individual appointment and medical coding, based on the level of care. So the group visit is the same as a regular office visit with no extra charge for additional time. So even if the patients are seen individually, the rate of reimbursement remains unaltered. A single appointment can produce a number of separate claim reimbursements depending on the size of the group.
• Better Patient Education and Satisfaction – Patients can get much more information in 90 minutes than during a short visit. They are frequently found to help, support and advise one another based on their personal experiences. They will gain more information and get answers to the questions which they might have forgotten to ask.

Disadvantages of Group Visits

• Privacy Issues – During a one-on-one consultation, discussions between the physician and patient are private and confidential. In a group visit, patient confidentiality may be compromised. Though each patient in the group is usually made to sign a confidentiality agreement, there is no guarantee that the information would not be shared.
• Lack of Individual Attention – It may not be possible for the physician to provide each person in the group with individual attention. A patient who talks openly may receive better attention than the one who needs more persuasion to open up.
• Quality of Care – Quality of care may be affected as physicians might find it stressful to move from person to person. They may have a difficult time multitasking.

Whether individual or group appointments, proper appointment scheduling is critical for the efficient functioning of a medical practice. Healthcare outsourcing companies provide professional services to optimize patient schedules, helping physicians deal with issues such as heavy patient inflow and the arrival of unscheduled patients. The right company can provide solutions that increase patient satisfaction and revenue.

OSI provides RCM services for dental and medical practices of all sizes and specialties. Services include billing, insurance verifications, prior authorizations, coding, A/R management and more.