The most significant effect observed is with the change from baseline results .
Some evidence suggests post-intervention and change from baseline systolic blood pressure improvement at the nine to twelve month interval and change from baseline improvement at the 4 year timeframe .
There is no evidence that group visits improve LDL cholesterol values of the group visit participants .
IMPLICATION S FOR PRACTICE The evidence suggests that the most powerful model of Group medical visits ( GMV ) is when a clinician prescriber is present during or immediately after GMV sessions for medication reconciliation or individual patient needs .
BACKGROUND The prevalence of diabetes mellitus is ubiquitous .
Complications and costs of diabetes are rising and are depleting limited re sources .
It is imperative for healthcare professionals and patients alike to confront this chronic condition by exploring new interventions .
An innovative health care delivery model has emerged in the last 25 years in the form of the group medical visit .
Group medical visits can range from of six to twenty patients scheduled together with time allotted for individual care as well as in the group setting .
Problems in the medical interpretation of overviews.
Recently , investigators have combined formally the results of all available r and omized trials testing a particular therapy to get a better estimate of the effectiveness of that treatment than any single trial can provide in isolation . It seems intuitively clear , however , that formal overviews will yield medically meaningful results only under certain defined circumstances . First , the treatments that are pooled should be similar enough that any inferences about the effect of treatment will refer to something more specific than an idealized ' average therapy ' . Second , patient selection in the pooled trials should be uniform enough that the inferences will be applicable to some defined patient population . Third , although the potential biases of excluding trials from pooling are substantial , so are the problems of including trials whose execution might be flawed in a biased manner ; it is not clear what can be done about this , since biased studies probably can not be identified in an unambiguous manner . Finally , it would seem prudent to consider the medical context during which trials were performed ; it is probably not reasonable to assume that quantitative measures of treatment effect obtained by pooling studies from different eras of treatment will be an accurate reflection of what current treatment can achieve , even if everything else is held constant . For these reasons the quantitative measures of treatment effect that derive from formal overviews may have little relevance to medical decision-making . Overviews might still be useful in indicating the general direction of a treatment effect , provided that no qualitative interactions are present . Although such interactions may seem improbable , some recent examples from the cancer literature suggest that their presence can not be ruled out a priori
The most significant effect observed is with the change from baseline results .
Some evidence suggests post-intervention and change from baseline systolic blood pressure improvement at the nine to twelve month interval and change from baseline improvement at the 4 year timeframe .
There is no evidence that group visits improve LDL cholesterol values of the group visit participants .
IMPLICATION S FOR PRACTICE The evidence suggests that the most powerful model of Group medical visits ( GMV ) is when a clinician prescriber is present during or immediately after GMV sessions for medication reconciliation or individual patient needs .
BACKGROUND The prevalence of diabetes mellitus is ubiquitous .
Complications and costs of diabetes are rising and are depleting limited re sources .
It is imperative for healthcare professionals and patients alike to confront this chronic condition by exploring new interventions .
An innovative health care delivery model has emerged in the last 25 years in the form of the group medical visit .
Group medical visits can range from of six to twenty patients scheduled together with time allotted for individual care as well as in the group setting .