“Integrative Health Group Visits As Core Delivery Strategies”
by John Weeks, Publisher/Editor of The Integrator Blog News and Reports
Integrative health group visits was the topic of an April 28, 2016 grand-rounds webinar with the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health, the organization of 68 academic medical centers promoting the integrative model. The two speakers were Katherine Gergen-Barnett, MD (pictured right) with Boston Medical Center (BMC), and Ilana Seidel, MD (pictured below) from George Washington University Medical School.
The growing exploration of “integrative health group visits” as core delivery strategies has developed from a need to consider strategies for cost savings as well as a number of other reasons including the following:
- A focus on education and empowerment in integrative health and medicine.
- Evidence that adults learn best when they are not merely being passive recipients
- The whole person philosophy that success in creating health is ultimately in the hands of the individual seeking care rather than the practitioner who provides it
Gergen-Barnett opened the recent webinar by speaking to the power of the approach: “The idea of group visits is that we as human beings are built for community – and when we get sick we are often alone […] Group visit theory is that patients working together as a group can manage conditions better [and] not about the provider being in the room.”
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