Our Group Visits Offer Deep Dives Into Functional Medicine

 

If you are a patient of ours at Kare Health & Wellness, then you’ve probably heard a lot about our group visits lately. Or perhaps you’ve been fortunate enough to actually participate in one of our group visits.

The feedback we’ve received has been excellent on the group visits we have been doing. We truly love conducting group visits. We get the opportunity to dive much deeper into the things that our patients really want to know about functional medicine in Springfield Missouri. We love seeing our patients learn from each other.

If this is the first you are hearing of group visits, they aren’t a new concept. They’ve been utilized in clinical practice since the early to mid-1990s and have increased significantly in the last several years. Major medical institutions, such as Yale Health and The Cleveland Clinic have made group visits part of their practices.

Why are group visits growing in popularity? There are several reasons for this, but one of the most important is they provide much needed support. In 2018, a survey completed by Cigna showed that half of Americans feel lonely or isolated at least some of the time with Millennials and Gen-Z being the loneliest generations ever.

Loneliness is one of biggest negative impacts on health and has been shown to have the same impact on mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. That’s alarming. No wonder patient’s health improves after participating in group visits.

Functional medicine group visits strive to create a community of caring and trust and change the story of the patient from one of isolation, frustration and fear to one of hope, clarity, and empowerment. The community learning environment allows patients to feel safe and to also learn from the experiences of their fellow group members.

Group visits have been shown to be more effective than one-on-one visits with a provider. They are longer, allowing a provider to give each patient more attention. Group visits provide education and support on topics such as diet, lifestyle, supplements, disease processes and ultimately the underlying causes of the diseases that there often is not time to discuss in a one-on-one visit. It is not surprising that patient compliance and satisfaction are much higher after group visits than one-on-one visits.

In Functional Medicine, treatment plans and lifestyle changes are quite extensive and overwhelming, particularly in the early stages of treatment. At Kare Health & Wellness, we have created an innovative group visit system unlike most others in which patients in similar phases of their treatment are seen together.

Who can understand the struggles a patient may be experiencing better than another patient in the exact same place? The individuals in similar treatment phases are instrumental in providing suggestions and feedback to one another. Bonding and trust among individuals experiencing similar struggles are powerful motivators and key components for accountability and, ultimately, achievement of goals.

As you can probably tell, we are very passionate about our group visits. We believe in their efficacy as we regularly get to see our group visits improve success and transform patients’ lives. We know you will be thrilled with group visits as well once you see for yourself what they can do to improve your health. Contact our office today to find out how you can participate in an upcoming group visit.

Keri Sutton - RN, MSN, ANP-C, AGPCNP-BC

Keri is a Nurse Practitioner and founder at Kare Health & Wellness. Keri's pursuit of personal answers to her own health issues landed her in the top of Functional Medicine. As she utilized functional Medicine to get her own health and life back, she made it her life's work to bring this empowering form of healthcare to as many people as she can.

About Us

Our mission is to create a safe environment for our patients to share their story and be empowered to take control of their health.  We constantly challenge patients to think differently about their health. We never find contentment in simply being disease free. We want to help patients optimize their vitality of life so that they can strive for things that they thought were unattainable.

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