Do Patients Really Prefer Individual Outpatient Follow-up Visits, Compared with Group Medical Visits?

Abstract

Access to outpatient psychiatric care remains problematic in Canada. We have been using group medical visits (GMV) to treat psychiatric outpatients with mood and anxiety disorders. Our study aimed to show that patients are similarly satisfied with GMV and individual psychiatric treatment, hence the concern that patients truly prefer individual treatment may be unfounded. Our study compared patient satisfaction in people who have had previous individual psychiatric care and are now receiving GMV to determine whether there is a treatment preference. Questionnaire data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. The ANOVAs showed no differences in patients' experiences with individual treatment, compared with GMV. In addition, we found when asked directly, most patients preferred GMV or had no treatment preference. These findings indicate that patients' perspectives of individual psychiatric treatment and GMV are roughly equal. This suggests that the method of GMV deserves further study and comparison with other clinical models of psychiatric outpatient treatment.