Fostering health in a new way

A GROUP FOCUS: The Women's Medicine Collaborative approaches many patient appointments in a new way, bringing multiple health care providers and support staff together with the patient. Dr. Kerri Batra, left, and Dr. Margaret
A GROUP FOCUS: The Women's Medicine Collaborative approaches many patient appointments in a new way, bringing multiple health care providers and support staff together with the patient. Dr. Kerri Batra, left, and Dr. Margaret "Peg" Miller, talk to Ana Diaz, a patient during one of the collaborative's multidisciplinary patient appointments. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

One of the hallmarks of a great innovation is how it can slide in to save the day: offering a necessary service, creatively solving a problem and easing pain points for populations that have previously been underserved. Women’s Medicine Collaborative, a Lifespan initiative that has grown since its inception in 2011 to be Rhode Island’s largest multispecialty, co-located center dedicated to women’s care, hits on all those points – and more.

Dr. Margaret “Peg” Miller is the medical director of the multi-disciplinary collaborative, which employs a total of 70 providers, five physical therapists, and 145 support staff. She pointed to the collaborative’s access to the infrastructure of the Lifespan system, alongside a philosophy of commitment to ingenuity, as the building blocks for its success.

Some patients balk at the idea of moving from an appointment behind closed doors to the more open, group format. In fact, Miller said, recent nationwide statistics show only about 30 percent of patients willing to accept such an appointment.

“The only other place in medicine where groups are used is in psychiatry, and groups have been done there for many years,” said Miller.

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Whereas today patients can mostly expect a rushed, 15-minute appointment with a provider who is juggling other patients and a deluge of paperwork, the group appointments provide more detailed time, space and information. And Miller had a second set of statistics, these from the collaborative’s patient surveys, that show real results.

“We’ve had lots of patients who were nervous about it at first, but want to come back again. Our surveys show that 85-90 percent of patients would come back for another shared medical appointment.” •

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