Effectiveness of Shared Medical Appointments Versus Traditional Clinic Visits for Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes

Shared medical appointments began in the United States in 1996 to advance quality of care and enhance patients' ability to self-manage. Group visits gather patients with the same diagnosis for individual examinations followed by group education sessions taught by the provider. This leads to the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others. The Cleveland Clinic Department of Pediatric Endocrinology offers a shared medical appointment group for pediatric patients with type 1 diabetes called the ESCALAIT clinic (Enrichment Services and Care for Adolescents Living with Autoimmune Insulin Dependent Type 1 Diabetes). The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of traditional clinic visits with shared medical appointments for adolescents with type 1 diabetes in terms of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) improvement. Eighty ESCALAIT patients, aged 11 to 19 years were compared with 516 clinic controls of the same age. Visits were approximately 3 months apart for both patient groups. Changes in HbA1c between groups were calculated from the first to fourth visits. There was a statistically significant difference between the ESCALAIT clinic patients and the control patients. Our results revealed that the group visit patients had less improvement in HbA1c values at the last visit approximately 1 year later, but we would argue that the difference is not clinically significant. However, there were many benefits to shared medical appointment visits including increased access to care as well as peer support. Shared medical appointments are therefore a valid alternative to traditional clinic visits in this patient population.