Group Medical Care: A New Model of Care in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Does the Patient Feel Satisfied?

Background:
There are advances to provide patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with good care, but we continue to observe inadequate evolution and avoidable complications, so we promote an empowerment program so that they know their disease and avoid mistakes that affect their quality of life. In this way, the idea of implementing an innovative model of control consultation arose 3 years ago, thus starting to the group medical care in an IBD Unit of a University Hospital, a shared appointment of at least 90 min, conducted by a gastroenterologist specialist in IBD, fellows and nurses. Systematic reviews have demonstrated group visits to be as good as standard individual care, and in some cases, better at improving health outcomes for specific conditions such as chronic diseases
Methods:
Observational, descriptive and cross- sectional study with 112 patients (89 with ulcerative colitis and 23 with Crohn’s disease) users of the IBD unit, to whom a survey was applied to know the degree of satisfaction with the group consultation.
Results:
91% of patients prefer group medical care to individual consultation; 88% have improved adherence to treatment; 97% know their disease better; 86% feel less afraid of it; 93% know the importance of evaluation by a multidisciplinary team in IBD; for 94% the care is now better; 87% think appointments are close; 96% would recommend group medical care and in relation to the degree of satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10, 90% assigned it 10 points.
Conclusions:
The IBD Group Consultation, the only one we know for IBD in Latin America, is a good control alternative for patients with IBD. Compared with individual care, group visits have the potential to improve patient experience, health outcomes, patients learn more robust health knowledge than from a provider alone and can feel inspired and supported by fellow participants to achieve their health goals. New levels of cooperation are needed to incentivize innovations. Its application in other countries could have a real impact on it in the future.