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Astonishingly, the world´s richest nation is now having to resort to group doctor appointments to make ends meet. This book takes health care professional through every step of the process of organizing and conducting these SMAs (shared medical appointments).

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Properly run group visit programs offer patient-centered care that can improve access, quality, outcomes, productivity, revenues, and both patient and physician satisfaction. The ABCs of Group Visits is a concise implementation manual that guides readers through a 10-week pipeline to design and launch a successful customized group visit program in any practice, large or small. The group visit model is highly adaptable and has been used to great success for follow-up visits, physical examinations, new patient intakes, and chronic disease management (among other applications) and can offer hope to beleaguered primary and specialty care physicians, Medicare, and Medicaid. Ideal for physicians, healthcare administrators and executive leaders alike, The ABCs of Group Visits contains all the vital information to help solve many of the problems facing busy, backlogged physicians and bring joy back into the practice of medicine.
"Group visits are just the type of ´win-win´ innovation that healthcare needs today improving outcomes, enhancing service, and at their best, reducing costs and burden on both clinicians and those they serve." Don Berwick, MD, former President and CEO of IHI
"Group visits offer an innovation to healthcare that can drive improvements to quality, outcomes, service, and productivity in all spheres in medicine plus, as demonstrated in our substantial experience with them at Cleveland Clinic, yield high levels of patient and physician satisfaction in a wide variety of specialties." David L. Bronson, MD, FACP, President and CEO, Cleveland Clinic Regional Hospitals; Professor of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine

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Why try group visits in your practice?.- Today´s three major group visit models.- Twelve key first steps.- Weeks 10 and 9 prior to launching your group visit.- Weeks 8, 7, and 6 prior to launch.- Weeks 5, 4, and 3 prior to launch.- Weeks 2 and 1 prior to launch.- The launch of your new group visit and thereafter.

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From the reviews:
"This book describes a new way to schedule office visits that brings a number of patients together for medical diagnoses, similar to group counseling sessions run by psychologists. The purpose is to provide an implementation guide for the underlying philosophy and tenets of group visits with the many practical aspects that psychologists have already worked through. ... The audience is ... those engaged in the discussion of how to deliver medical care in the future." (Vincent F. Carr, Doody´s Book Reviews, March, 2013)

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