Drop In Group Medical Appointments (DIGMA) Orientation Manual
DIGMAs originated at the Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical center in 1996 by Edward Noffsinger, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist as a result of his work in designing and implementing large multidisciplinary group treatment programs for high risk patients and their families. He developed this tool to enable physicians to see more patients in the same amount of time and in a way that both patients and physician professional satisfaction were improved while access, service and quality of care were simultaneously increased.
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Cooperative Health Care Clinics
CHCC is a program in which a multi-disciplinary team facilitates an interactive process of care delivery in a monthly group visit. The CHCC visit can be conceptualized as an extended doctor’s office visit where not only physical and medical needs are met, but educational social and psychological concerns can be dealt with effectively.
This research based program has shown increased patient satisfaction, increased quality of life, increased confidence in patients ability to live with chronic health problems, provider satisfaction and decreased cost of patient care.This research is only available to ACP members and requires a login.
Billing Information
Because group visits are relatively unusual, no nationally accepted standard has yet emerged for billing them, and there is no special code for standard group visits. Acceptable billing thus varies both geographically and among different carriers.