In The News - Community Doctors Appointments

So in another In The News post I'd like to mention another thing I heard on the same newscast as the previous post. In happier news, it is about a person centered heath-care advance.

It seems that in some provinces, including Alberta, doctors are testing something that I believe was called community doctors appointments. Or shared doctors appointments.

The basic idea here is that instead of having one person go to a doctor and get a 10 or 15 minute appointment to see a doctor and get a very quick once over that instead the doctor would cluster several appointments of people with similar conditions.

Now when I first heard this without the explanation it sounded stupider than stupid. How could each patient be properly treated as a cluster of patients. But as it was explained it made more and more sense.

The cluster of appointments would be enough that the appointment would be for approximately 2 hours. During this time the doctor would get to look at/talk to each of the patients one-on-one for a bit of time but would also give advice as a group.

So, as a result of the built-in effiency of the cluster more advice could be given to each patient. Also, as each patient would be given time to talk about their own symptoms the doctor could see if there were any similarities.

All in all, it sounds like not a bad new innovation to me. And as I said before, it said on the newscast I was watching, it is already happening in my home province of Alberta. Maybe, I should ask my doctor, who is seriously overworked, about it.

If she takes to it, I might become her new best friend for suggesting it. Of course, it is possibly something she has already heard of from medical journals or somesuch but still it's nice to think I could "tip the balance".

What do you think of all of this? Would you be willing to submit to a shared doctors appointment? Do you think it will catch on with the general public? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the idea? Leave a comment.

Carmen