Changing Health Care – Is it time to consider adding shared medical appointments to your practice?

The shared medical appointment (SMA) is a health care provision model that has emerged as a desirable option for quality care. These are medical appointments in which multiple patients with the same chronic medical condition are seen as a group for follow-up or routine care (thus, patients share their appointments). The SMAs provide a setting in which patients have improved access to their clinician, the benefit of added education, and can share experiences and advice with other patients with the same disease. To address these educational needs, this program will provide practitioners with the tools to implement successful SMAs in their medical practices. This program will also stimulate participants to formulate ideas and discuss ways to increase patient access and quality outcomes when implementing shared medical appointments.

Who Should Attend?

This course is designed for practicing physicians, physician assistants, nurses, nurse practitioners, and other staff interested in starting and/or improving their shared medical appointments practice.

Changing Health Care: One Shared Medical Appointment at a Time will help you:

• Describe data supporting the use of SMAs to increase patient access and improve quality outcomes for select chronic conditions.
• Utilize an evidence-based approach to describe patient and provider benefits of the SMA model and be able to engage health care providers and infrastructure administrators in a critical discussion on benefits and costs of implementing an SMA.
• Objectively evaluate specific chronic conditions for their potential treatment efficacy and cost-effectiveness;
• Highlight the background and history of SMAs.
• Implement a successful SMA model in their medical practice.