If you have been around Cornerstone for any length of time, you have either probably heard of, or even attended a group health visit. These types of visits are billed to insurance as a short, 15-20 minute office visit, but allow you to spend one and half to two hours with your provider discussing a particular topic in a group setting.
What is a Group Health Visit?
One of the most profound benefits that come from hosting Group
Health Visits is that you, as a patient, start to feel a sense of tribe and
community. During these unique shared medical appointments, you get to see
others with similar concerns and hear about common struggles. Likewise, as you
learn and share in a common health environment, you will move from isolation into
hope and community. With this deeper engagement, you can begin to feel a part
of something, have a stronger clinical knowledge base, and build a web of
support within your health story. Group Health Visits cultivate a sense of
having a “medical home”, where you can turn to for answers, encouragement, and
connection.
Why You Want to Attend
A second and important reason for Group Health Visits is the opportunity for you to learn about complex issues at a lower cost. Deep dives with your providers cannot be afforded in a 15-20 minute individual encounter. In contrast, a 60-90 minute shared session with your provider will allow you to receive in-depth test marker descriptions and rich illustrations for the root cause of various health concerns that their test may reveal. For example, once a salivary hormone profile or functional stool test has been run, you are asked to return to review your results and your specific treatment plan in either our hormone or digestive health Group Health Class. As each class is 60-90 minutes, but only billed as a 15-minute office visit, it gives you as a patient, an incredible value.
A third reason to consider Group Health Visits is
practicality. Group health visits reduce wait times for return appointments by
bringing like concerns together. When our office offers a class on digestion
for example, I discuss the same key topics of avoiding inflammatory foods,
SIBO, leaky gut, the microbiome, etc. By saying it to a group all at once, it
frees up 12 slots on my schedule to now go after their more individualized
concerns in a one-on-one visit. This improves continuity of care by providing
more frequent touch points than can be accomplished with individual
appointments.
Lastly, I have so enjoyed leading small groups of interested
patients in Group Health Visits over the last 3 years that I’m convinced it is
one of the most fun, most effective, and most impactful contributions I can
make to a patient’s health. I look
forward to seeing you in one of our Group Health Visits in the future!
~ Dr. Christopher Mote, DO, DC
To learn more about scheduling a group health class, please
call our office at 720-452-7420.